The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519-1810 9781503621114

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The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule

The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico 1519-1810

CHARLES GIBSON

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS STANFORD CALIFORNIA

ForA.K.G.

Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 1964 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University Printed in the United States of America Cloth ISBN 0-8047-0196-2 Paper ISBN 0-8047-0912-2 Original printing 1964

Preface

In recent years increasing attention has been given to the Indian peoples of America. For certain areas i't is now possible to know the modern Indian civilization quite thoroughly and to discern at least the larger outlines of the past. The critical deficiencies of our understanding of Spanish America appear not where one might expect, in remote antiquity, for twentieth-century archaeology has made and continues to make enormous gains; they occur, paradoxically, where written documentation is most abundant, between the time of the first white contact and the twentieth century.It has therefore seemed to me that investigations of Indian history in the relatively recent past might be useful and worthwhile. In an earlier book dealing with the Mexican province of Tlaxcala, I sought to examine some features of Indian history in the post-conquest years. One defect of that work was that it failed to carry the research beyond the sixteenth century, a limitation that surely had consequences in the conclusions reached. In dealing with the Valley of Mexico, I have tried to cover the whole of the colonial period. My first intention was to treat the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as well, but the complications of the colonial years persuaded me that these alone are adequate for one inquiry, and for better or for worse this work terminates at 1810. Bibliographical commentary on sources has been reduced to a minimum, for the forthcoming Handbook of Middle American Indians will make such commentary superfluous. Subjects that may be regarded for the present as sufficiently understood and subjects that I know to be under investigation by others have likewise been dealt with only summarily; I have not, for example, treated the procedures of missionary conversion or technical demography or Indian arts with the attention that a uniform documentation

Vl

Preface

would require. My occasional trespasses on preserves already staked out by friends and colleagues are intended chiefly to call attention to their work, which will speedily supersede what I have to say. My study of this subject began in the fall of 1951 and continued to January 1963. Several important new items have appeared in recent months, but I have abided by my terminal date and refrained from incorporating them. I wish especially to mention, however, the new work of Woodrow Borah and Sherburne F. Cook, The Aboriginal Population of Central Mexcio on the Eve of Spanish Conquest, which would otherwise receive well-merited citation in these pages. My indebtedness to the researches of Robert Ricard, Franfois Chevalier, Silvio Zavala, Lesley B. Simpson, George Kubler, and the late Robert Barlow will be evident to all readers familiar with twentieth-century investigations of Mexican colonial history. My colleagues in the Ethnohistory sections of the Handbook of Middle American Indians-Howard F. Cline, Henry B. Nicholson, John B. Glass, and Donald Robertson-have provided me with much general and particular information. Correspondence and personal discussions with Jose Miranda and Wigberto Jimenez Moreno in Mexico and with Pedro Carrasco, France Scholes, and Woodrow Borah in the United States have consistently enlarged my data and bibliography. Special aid on points of fact, bibliography, or presentation has been furnished by Bohumil Badura, Ernesto de /a Torre, Jean-Pierre Berthe, Earl f. Pariseau, Robert Potash, Robert Knowlton, Donald Cooper, Jack Rounccville, Paula Bylsma, and Mary Anglim. The fohn Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation supported my archival studies in Mexico. in 1952-53, and the Rockefeller Foundation furnished a grant in 196o-61 for further archival studies in Spain, France, Mexico, and the United States. The bibliographical work was accomplished in large part with the library resources of the State University of Iowa. My wife has contributed at all stages to the preparation of this book.

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Contents

CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER

I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX

CHAPTER X CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER

XI XII XIII XIV

The Valley of Mexico Tribes Towns Encomienda and Corregimiento Religion The People The Political Town Tribute and Town Finance Labor Land Agriculture Production and Exchange

I

9 32 s8 98 136 I66 194 220 257 300

The City

335 368

Conclusion

4°3

Appendixes

4I3 465 467

Abbreviations Notes Glossary Bibliography Index

599 607 637

Illustrations

General orientation maps appear on pp. xi-xii.

MAPS

r. Valley of Mexico Elevations 2. Tribal Areas 3· Cabeceras and Estancias 4· Encomiendas 5· Political Jurisdictions 6. Cabeceras de Doctrina and Visitas 7· Labor Repartimientos 8. Areas of Intrusion by Cattle to 1610 9· Principal Haciendas IO. Communication Routes II. Sujetos of Tenochtitlan 12. Sujetos of Tlatelolco FIGURES 1. 2.

3· 4· 5· 6.

7· 8. 9·

Barrios and Estancias Sujetos of Teotihuacan, Acolman, and Tepexpan Selected Population Trends Population Changes, Southern and Northern Jurisdictions Indian and White Age Groups in Mexico City, 1790 Population at the End of the Colonial Period Community Finance Chalco Repartimiento Workers, 1619-20 Desagiie Expenses

35 46 139 141 145 148 216 234 241

lllustra tions

X

ro. The Indian Laborer's Daily Wage I 1. Maximum and Minimum Temperatures, by Month 12. Monthly Rainfall at Selected Sites 13. Maize Prices, 1525-IBIO 14· Sizes of Wheat Farms, 156]-16o2 15. Maize Production in p Chalco Haciendas, 1773 r6. Finances of a Late Colonial Hacienda 17. Recorded Indian Tributaries in Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco

251 302 304 314 325 327 332 379

PLATES

Plates

1- vIII

follow page I78

The church at A colman I I. Religious scenes: volador, friars, and baptism III. Abuses of encomienda: a servant of the encomendero mistreats the encomienda Indians, who pay gold and provisions IV. Standing Indian figure v. Indian types: farmer, tailor, and carpenters vr. A page from the Badianus Herbal VII. Investment of Indian political officers by the viceroy VI I 1. Tribute records: Antonio Valeriano testifies to the death of a tribute payer; Indian tribute in encomienda 1.

Plates I x- x II follow page 274

Indian labor in hacienda and obraje x. Indian land records: lands and retainers; varieties of t!Je 6oo-vara measurement xr. Spaniards usurp Indian lands xu. Land dispute in Ixtlahuaca IX.

Plates

xI II - x

v 1 follow page 370

xru. Mexico City: panoramic view by G6mez de Trasmonte in 1628 XIV. Mexico City: plan of Chappe d'Auteroche about 1770 xv. Indian fishing, fowling, and hunting shown in the Uppsala map XVI. Desague: map of the early seventeenth century by Enrico Martinez

MEXICO GULF

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Figure rr. Maximum, minimum, and average monthly temperatures in Mexico City. Data are for the year 1897, from Ramirez, La vegetaci6n en Mexico, p. 248.

Agriculture is reflected in the natural vegetation of the several regions and one that plays an important role in determining the character of agriculture. In Pachuca, to the north of the Valley, the wet season brings five times as much rain as the dry season. In the humid south, where the dry-season rainfall is approximately the same as in the north, the wet season has four times as much rain as in the north or twenty times as much as the dry season/ 2 The fluctuations of temperature, the sequences of wet and dry seasons, and the differences between north and south appear to have been stable Valley conditions since prehistoric times. The written record clearly indicates the influence of these conditions in the colonial period. 13 The record is less explicit, however, with reference to long-term climatic modifications, for until the 176o's, when Felipe de Zuniga y Ontiveros and Antonio Alzate compiled the earliest tables, colonial peoples did not systematically measure temperature, and the records that remain of colonial rainfall occur as casual observations applying to abnormal periods.14 Data on water supply in the towns of Chalco province in the seventeenth century demonstrate that colonial peoples recognized a connection between the cutting of forests and the disappearance of streams. A further decline in moisture was commented upon in the eighteenth century, and again it was related to removal of the forest cover. 15 The over-all evidence suggests a progressive colonial desiccation, related to deforestation, to increasingly rapid runoff, and to a declining rainfall. Data on colonial changes in the distribution of land and water areas are more precise. Because the lakes were shallow, relatively slight changes in the volume of water created extensive changes in shore outline. Motolinla, who arrived in New Spain in 1524, asserted that the diminution of the lake area began in that year.16 His reference was to the environs of Mexico City and explicitly not to its eastern side, which was still bounded by water long after his time. The original Indian dike, the new dike of 1555-s6, and the northern and southern causeways of the city served as obstacles to the westward movement of the saline waters of Lake Texcoco, and the diminution mentioned by Motolinla probably applied only to the slightly more elevated area west of these barriers. A possible explanation for the decrease in water levels here appears in the cultivation and irrigation projects between Tenayuca and Coyoacan, the only agricultural zone to be vigorously exploited by Spaniards at the time of Motolini'a's writing, and, given the efficacy of the dikes, the only one whose streams directly watered the area in question.

Agriculture 0

25 50 Miles

II

t

• Pochuco

10

N

• Tcotihuocon

• Tocuboya • Desierto de Leones

., .., 9

. I

-,1.

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Figure 14. Sizes of wheat farms in 1563 and r6o2. The shift from the small farm to the large hacienda in wheat production was accomplished during the forty years r563r6o2. Percentages indicate the portion of the total planting sown on the farms in each category. Sources: AGN, Mercedes, vol. 7, fols. 217v ff.; Tierras, vol. 70, exp. 8, fols. r7r-r8r.

Agriculture Spaniards. In the middle and late sixteenth century Indian maize lands came increasingly into Spanish hands, and Indian labor was diverted to a variety of new activities. Crisis in the traditional Indian maize economy was first noted during the epidemic of the I 54o's, when the shortages caused by the epidemic were intensified and exploited by Spanish speculators. Viceregal action took two forms: prohibition of maize purchase for resale, and encouragement of additional Indian maize plantations in the towns. Viceregal orders for the expansion of Indian plantings were characteristic of the 155o's and after. Regulations became progressively more stringent. They included the commutations of multiple tributes to maize tributes; the promotion of maize cultivation on community lands and of the storage of maize in the Indian towns for future sale; and finally (I 577) the requirement that each tributary cultivate ten varas of land.188 The restrictions on private Spanish maize purchases from Indians were repeated. Spaniards were forbidden to buy in the Indians' houses or anywhere save in the markets, and purchases for resale had to be recorded before judges. 139 The viceregal efforts to make adjustments in the maize economy thus remained until the late 157o's within the limits of individual or communal Indian production. But with the failure of these efforts, maize joined wheat in the Spanish-owned commercial haciendas, now not simply as an adjunct of hacienda operation for fodder or local sustenance, but as a separate article of commerce. The transition to commercial production of maize was accomplished in the fifty years between 1580 and 1630. In a revealing statement of 1630, one of the Spanish councilors of Mexico City observed that fifty years earlier the city had been supplied by Indians, either by direct sales or by tribute maize, whereas in 1630 Indian maize agriculture had been reduced to the status of local subsistence and the city was being supplied by "wealthy Spaniards." 140 By this date the hacienda as a maize producer had every advantage over the Indian community. It possessed lands for extensive production and facilities for storage and transportation already developed for wheat. The hacendados controlled Indian labor. They could profitably undersell small producers in bulk transactions or hoard supplies for a seller's market. They could offset the effects of variation in price by paying laborers in money when the price of maize was high or alternatively in maize when the price was low-a practice that transferred the burden of price fluctuation to the Indian workers. 141 Hacendados in the first half of the seventeenth

Agriculture

32 7

10

9 8