This week’s materials look at the concept of borderlands and the role of race and gender in negotiating relations between two societies.? You can address any of these questions or si

"This Evil Extends Especially… to the Feminine Sex": Negotiating Captivity in the New Mexico Borderlands

Author(s): James F. Brooks

Source: Feminist Studies , Summer, 1996, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Summer, 1996), pp. 279-309

Published by: Feminist Studies, Inc.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3178414

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rTH IS EVIL EXTENDS ESPECIALLY… TO T'H FEMININE SEX":

NEGOTIATING CAPTIVITY IN THE NEW MEXICO BORDERLANDS

JAMES F. BROOKS

Late in the summer of 1760, a large Comanche raiding party besieged the fortified home of Pablo Villalpando in the village of Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico. After a daylong fight, the Co- manches breached the walls and killed most of the male de-

fenders. They then seized fifty-seven women and children, among whom was twenty-one-year-old Maria Rosa Villalpan- do, Pablo's second daughter, and carried them into captivity on the Great Plains. Maria's young husband, Juan Jose Xacques, was slain in the assault, but her infant son, Jose Juliano Xac- ques, somehow escaped both death and captivity.

The Comanches apparently traded Maria shortly thereafter to the Pawnees, for by 1767 she lived in a Pawnee village on the Platte River and had borne another son, who would come to be known as Antoine. In that year, the French trader and co- founder of St. Louis, Jean Sale dit Leroie, visited the Pawnees and began cohabiting with Maria. About one year later, she bore Sale a son, whom they named Lambert. Perhaps this ar- rangement suited Sale's trading goals, for it wasn't until 1770 that he ended Maria's Indian captivity and brought her to St. Louis, where they married.

Jean and Maria (now Marie Rose Sale) had three more chil- dren, when, for unknown reasons, Jean returned to France, where he remained the rest of his life. Maria stayed in St. Louis to become the matriarch of an increasingly prominent family. Her New Mexican son, Jose Juliano, would visit her there, although we will see that the reunion proved bitter- sweet. Maria finally died at the home of her daughter, Helene, in 1830, at well over ninety years of age. For Maria Rosa Villal-

Feminist Studies 22, no. 2 (summer 1996). ? 1996 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 279

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James F. Brooks

pando, captivity yielded a painful, yet paradoxically successful, passage across cultures into security and longevity.l

Long understood as a volatile and complex multiethnic border- land, greater New Mexico presents an intriguing problem to scholars of Indian-Euroamerican relations. Despite the reality of Spanish colonialism and the notable success of the Pueblo Revolt (1680-93), the region remained a "nondominant fron- tier" in which neither colonial New Mexicans nor the numeri-

cally superior indigenous peoples proved able (or willing) to dominate or eject the other completely.2 This article takes one step toward a deeper understanding of the question, by explor- ing the role captive women like Maria Rosa played in promot- ing conflict and accommodation between colonial Spanish (and later Mexican) society and the indigenous people of greater New Mexico. During the Spanish and Mexican periods (c. 1600-1847), thousands of Indian and hundreds of Spanish women and children "crossed cultures" through the workings of a captive-exchange system that knit diverse communities into vital, and violent, webs of interdependence. These cap- tives, whether of Spanish origin, or Native Americans "ran- somed" by the Spanish at rescates (trade fairs), seem crucial to a "borderlands political economy" that utilized human beings in far-reaching social and economic exchange.3

Developing in the wake of Spanish slave raids and Indian reprisals, over time this commerce in captives provided the ba- sis for a gradual convergence of cultural interests and identi- ties at the village level, emerging in "borderlands communities of interest" by the middle years of the nineteenth century. Seen as both the most valuable "commodities" in intersocietal trade

and as key transcultural actors in their own right, captive women and children participated in a terrifying, yet at times fortuitous, colonial dialectic between exploitation and negotia- tion. Until now, their histories have lain in the shadows of bor- derlands historiography.4 Although firsthand accounts are rare, and other evidence must be used with caution, an exami- nation of their experience may contribute to our understanding of colonial processes in New Mexico and elsewhere in North America.

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James F. Brooks

Whatever the large-scale antagonisms between Spanish colonists and Native Americans, problems of day-to-day sur- vival required methods of cross-cultural negotiation. Pro- longed, intensive interaction between New Mexican pob- ladores (village settlers) and nomadic or pastoral Indian soci- eties required some mutually intelligible symbols through which cultural values, interests, and needs could be defined. Horses, guns, and animal hides spring immediately to mind as customary symbols of exchange, but women and children proved even more valuable (and valorized) as agents (and ob- jects) of cultural negotiations. In New Mexico, as elsewhere in North America, the "exchange of women" through systems of captivity, adoption, and marriage seem to have provided Euro- pean and Native men with mutually understood symbols of power with which to bridge cultural barriers.5

Rival men had seized captives and exchanged women long before European colonialism in North America. The exoga- mous exchange of women between "precapitalist" societies ap- pears to represent a phenomenon by which mutual obligations of reciprocity are established between kindreds, bands, and so- cieties, serving both to reinforce male dominance and to ex- tend the reproductive (social and biological) vigor of communi- ties.6 This article approaches the issue from a variety of sources and perspectives. Combining Spanish archival re- search with some of the classics of North American Indian eth-

nology, and viewing both through the lens of feminist critiques and extensions, I suggest that the capture and integration of women and children represented the most violent expression along a continuum of such exchange traditions. The patriar- chal subordination of women and children, it has been argued, served as a foundation upon which other structures of power and inequality were erected. Gerda Lerner contends that the assertion of male control over captive women's sexual and re- productive services provided a model for patriarchal owner- ship of women in "monogamous" marriages by which patrilin- eal bloodlines remained "pure." From this sense of proprietor- ship grew other notions of property, including the enslavement of human beings as chattels.7

In New Spain, under the Recopilacion of 1680 (a compendi- um of laws governing colonial/Indian relations), Spanish sub-

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James F. Brooks

jects had been encouraged to redeem indigenous captives from their captors, baptize them into the Catholic faith, and accul- turate them as new "detribalized" colonial subjects.8 These re- demptions occurred in roughly two forms-either through for- mal "ransoming" at annual trade fairs (ferias or rescates) or small-scale bartering (cambalaches) in local villages or at trad- ing places on the Great Plains. Trade fairs at Taos, Pecos, and Picuris Pueblos had long fostered the exchange of bison meat for corn, beans, and squash between Plains Indians and the Rio Grande Pueblos and had probably included some exchanges of people as well.9

These seasonal events continued after the Spanish recon- quest of New Mexico in 1692-96. Throughout the eighteenth century, Spanish church and secular authorities vied to gain control of this trade, variously blaming each other or local al- caldes (village mayors) for "the saddest of this commerce." In 1761 Fray Pedro Serrano chided Spanish governors, who "when the fleet was in" scrambled to gather as many horses, axes, hoes, wedges, picks, bridles, and knives in order to "gorge themselves" on the "great multitude of both sexes offered for sale."10 Fifteen years later, Fray Anatasio Dominguez reported that the Comanches brought to Taos for sale "pagan Indians, of both sexes, whom they capture from other nations." The going rate of exchange, which held quite steady until the mid-nine- teenth century, was "two good horses and some trifles" for an "Indian girl twelve to twenty years old." Male captive boys usu- ally brought a "she mule" or one horse and a "poor bridle … garnished with red rags." The general atmosphere, according to Dominguez, resembled a "second hand market in Mexico, the way people mill about.""

After 1800 these formal rescates decline, replaced with small- er, more frequent on-the-spot bartering. This seems due to sev- eral factors-Plains Indians wishing to avoid possible exposure to Euroamerican disease, a desire on the part of New Mexican villagers to escape taxation of their Indian trade, and a geo- graphical expansion of the borderlands economy. By the 1850s local traders like Jose Lucero and Powler Sandoval would pur- chase Mexican captives from Comanches at Plains outposts like "Quitaque" in Floyd County, Texas, giving, for example, "one mare, one rifle, one shirt, one pair of drawers, thirty small

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James F. Brooks

packages of powder, some bullets, and one buffalo robe" in ex- change for ten-year-old Teodoro Martel of Saltillo, Mexico.'2

Judging from extant New Mexican parochial registers, be- tween 1700 and 1850, nearly 3,000 members of nomadic or pastoral Indian groups entered New Mexican society as indios de rescate (ransomed Indians), indios genizaros ("slaves"), cria- dos (servants), or huerfanos (orphans), primarily through the artifice of "ransom" by colonial purchasers.13 Ostensibly, the cost of ransom would be retired by ten to twenty years of ser- vice to the redeemers, after which time these individuals would become vecinos (tithes-paying citizens). In practice, these people appear to have experienced their bondage on a continuum that ranged from near-slavery to familial incorpora- tion, an issue that will be addressed at length in this article.

Ransomed captives comprised an important component in colonial society, averaging about 10 to 15 percent of the colo- nial population, and especially in peripheral villages, where they may have represented as much as 40 percent of the"Span- ish" residents.14 Girls and boys under the age of fifteen com- posed approximately two-thirds of these captives, and about two-thirds of all captives were women "of serviceable age" or prepubescent girls.16

This commerce in women and children proved more than a one-way traffic, however. Throughout the period under consid- eration, nomadic groups like Comanches and Navajos made regular raids on the scattered poblaciones (settlements), at times seizing as many as fifty women and children.'6 In 1780, Spanish authorities estimated that the Naciones del Norte (Plains tribes of the northern frontier) alone held more than 150 Spanish citizens captive, and by 1830 the figure for the Co- manches alone may have exceeded 500.1 Among the Navajos, as late as 1883 U.S. Indian agent Dennis M. Riordan estimated that there were "300 slaves in the hands of the tribe," many of whom were "Mexicans captured in infancy."8 Like their Indian counterparts, these women and children found themselves most often incorporated into their host society through indige- nous systems of adoption. As fictive kin, they too experienced a range of treatment. Although impossible to arrive at precise numbers of New Mexican captives in Indian societies, their representation becomes increasingly significant in a discussion

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James F. Brooks

of the workings of the captive system and the personal experi- ence of captives themselves.

The captive-exchange system appears overwhelmingly com- plex when examined through particular cases, but certain overall patterns seem consistent. First, captive taking and trading represented the most violent and exploitative compo- nent of a long-term pattern of militarized socioeconomic ex- change between Indian and Spanish societies. Second, it seems that New Mexican captives and indios de rescate gen- erally remained in their "host" societies throughout their life- times. Third, female captives often established families within the host society, and their descendants usually became full culture-group members. Male captives, on the other hand, suf- fered either a quick retributive death or, if young, grew to be- come semiautonomous auxiliary warriors within their new so- ciety. Finally, it appears that many captives found ways to transcend their subordinate status by exercising skills devel- oped during their "cross-cultural" experience. In doing so, they negotiated profound changes in the cultural identity of the so- cieties within which they resided, changes which continue to reverberate in the borderlands today.

THE CAPTIVE EXPERIENCE

Torn from their natal societies in "slave" raids, treated like piezas ("coins," a common term in New Spain for slaves, both Indian and African) in a volatile system of intercultural ex- change, and finally the "property" of strangers, captive and ransomed women seem unlikely subjects as historical actors. But the experiences recounted henceforth show these women and children negotiating narrow fields of agency with notewor- thy skill. From positions of virtual powerlessness, captive women learned quickly the range of movement allowed by the host culture, especially in regard to adoption and compadrazgo (god-parenthood) practices.19 This first phase of integration gave them "kin" to whom they could turn for protection and guidance. But this security remained limited, and many faced coercive conjugal relationships, if not outright sexual exploita- tion by their new masters.

Whether of Spanish or Indian origin, two factors are essen-

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James F. Brooks

tial to our understanding of the captive experience in greater New Mexico and perhaps to similar cases in other periods and regions. First, captives' status and treatment within the host society would establish the structural constraints (culturally specific customs and laws governing rights and obligations) within which individuals might pursue their goals.20 Second, sheer luck and the individual captive's personal resources de- termined much of her actual lived experience, ranging from terror and exploitation to a few remarkable cases of deft nego- tiation and good fortune, into which Maria Rosa Villalpando's story certainly falls. Overall, the interplay of structural con- straints, contingency, and skills can be seen in most captives' lives. Another captive woman, Juana Hurtado Galv6an, proved so adept at the cross-cultural enterprise that her story exem- plifies successful adaptation.

Early in the summer of 1680, shortly before the conflagra- tions of the Pueblo Revolt, a band of Apaches del Nabajo ("Na- vajos") swept down upon the rancho of Captain Andres Hurta- do and took captive his seven-year-old daughter, Juana.21 For the next twelve years, her life among the Navajos lies con- cealed, a blank in the historical record that can only be recon- structed by inference and imagination. But those years of cap- tivity seem to hold the key to understanding much of Juana's subsequent life, a long and controversial career that ended in 1753. When she died, Juana owned her own rancho with three houses and managed extensive herds and flocks. Her illegiti- mate son, Juan Galvan, served as the teniente (assistant mag- istrate) of the Zia district.22 Nativity had given Juana linkages to both Spanish and Pueblo society, and in her captivity she de- veloped linguistic and kinship ties with the Navajos. Through- out her life, her experience as a captive woman would afford her special negotiating skills with which she pursued security for her lineage.

Juana's mother had come from the Pueblo of Zia, probably as a criada (domestic servant) of Captain Hurtado, but we know little more about her life.23 No doubt sexually used by Hurtado, the daughter she bore in 1673 was just one among hundreds of such coyotas (children of mixed Spanish/Indian parentage) resulting from the Spanish colonization of New Mexico. The mother's connection with Zia Pueblo, however, re-

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James F. Brooks

mained central to her daughter's story. After Juana's half- brother, Martin, a soldier in the Spanish reconquista of 1692, ransomed Juana from captivity, the young woman petitioned for and received a private merced (land grant) at the northwest corner of the Zia Pueblo lands, near the village known today as San Ysidro.24 This rancho proved a key locus of trade among Navajos, Pueblos, and Spanish villagers for the next half-cen- tury and was the source of Juana's wealth and influence.25

Although restored to colonial society, Juana never severed connections with her onetime captors. Frequent visits by Na- vajos to her rancho suggest that she had experienced adoption into a Navajo clan. She may even have married in captivity, as she never formalized any future conjugal relationship. Kinship aside, her trilingual skills and cultural intermediacy facilitated economic exchanges between potential enemies. Her affinity with Navajos remained so close that Fray Miguel de Menchero commended her usefulness in assisting proselytization efforts: "They had kept her for so long [that] the Indians of said Nation make friendly visits to her, and in this way the father of the said mission has been able to instruct some of them."26

Juana's conduct, however, also attracted criticism from church authorities. Throughout her life, she persisted in main- taining a long-term liaison with a married man of Zia, presum- ably named Galvan. By 1727, this relationship had resulted in four children and charges of scandalous behavior leveled against her by Franciscan padres. When authorities sought to place Juana in stocks, however, the people of Zia "threatened that the whole pueblo would move to the mesa tops, rather than have her mistreated."27 Like the Navajos, the people of Zia apparently saw tangible benefits in the presence of this kinswoman on their borders. Defining kinship more broadly than did the Spanish, they seemed willing to provoke conflict in defense of their relationship with someone who provided a bridge across three cultures. As she drew upon her qualities and talents as a negotiator, Juana "La Galvana" utilized her experience as a captive to carve out an intermediate niche in the complex power relations of colonial New Mexico.

Juana's intermediacy was accentuated by her mixed-blood status, and her paternal linkage to a Spanish encomendero (holder of tributary rights to Indian labor) probably allowed

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her the opportunity to occupy a privileged niche compared with many captives. Because one side of the captive system origi- nates in indigenous, precontact exogamous exchange tradi- tions, we need to look at gender and social hierarchies within Native American societies to begin to understand the structur- al constraints that Juana and other captives might have expe- rienced. Although they display variation, women's and cap- tives' status within Indian societies of the borderlands (Navajo, Apache, Ute, and Comanche) may be generally described as subordinate to men and holders of the "cultural franchise" but

enhanced by traditions of matrilineality and social mobility.28 Navajo patterns of gender and social hierarchies show a

blending of southern Athabascan systems and cultural adapta- tions to Spanish colonialism near their homelands. Navajo women owned the flocks of sheep and wove the textiles that formed the core of their pastoral economy. Matrilineal descent, therefore, conferred important productive resources as well as kin-reckoning through women. Navajo men, however, pre- vailed in "public" decisions involving warfare and diplomacy.9

Captives taken in warfare with other tribes or raids on Spanish settlements again experienced a range of treatment. If not killed in vengeance satisfaction, the captive invariably suf- fered a period of harsh and terrifying ritual abuse. This "tam- ing" process probably formed the first phase in adoption ritu- al.30 After "taming," most captives became inducted into the clan of their captor, or the "rich man" who purchased them from the successful warrior. Once a clan member, it seems few barriers stood in the way of social advancement. The New Mexican captive Nakai Na'ddis Saal, raised in a clan on Black Mesa, "became a singer of the Nightway," an important Navajo ceremony. The Sonoran captive Jesus Arviso, taken by Chirica- hua Apaches in 1850 as a boy and traded to the Navajo Kla Clan, served as the principal interpreter for his host society throughout the Fort Sumner "Long Walk" era. Marrying into the Nanasht'ezhii Clan, he chose to remain a Navajo, welcom- ing a congressional delegation to Fort Defiance in 1919 and liv- ing at Cubero until his death in 1932.31

Captive women usually became clan members and married exogamously. Even if not inducted into clan membership, their children by Navajo men were considered members of the fa-

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James F. Brooks

ther's clan.32 Although we can only speculate, these clan and kin affiliations probably provided Juana Hurtado with the net- works that allowed her to act as an intermediary between Zia Pueblo and Spanish society. Indeed, Juana seems noteworthy among captives for having chosen to return to her birthright, for some sources indicate that most captives, when "set free… immediately took the shortest trail back to the hogans of their masters."33

Captives seem to have fared less well among the Jicarilla Apaches, a semisedentary people who practiced a seasonal economy that balanced hunting and collecting with extensive horticulture. Apache women, however, benefited from matrilin- eality and ownership of fields and crops which "were planted, weeded, and harvested by the joint labors of the entire family." This gender-integrated labor diverged when men hunted or raided and women engaged in the life-cycle labor of family re- production. Although subordinate to men, women made impor- tant ritual contributions to the success of hunters: "a man and

his wife pray together and smoke ceremonially before the hus- band leaves for the hunt. After his departure the woman con- tinues a series of ritual duties." Similarly, before men departed for warfare or raiding, "a woman [was] chosen to represent each man to serve as proxy in group decisions, [and she] obeyed many restrictions in matters of dress, food, and behavior to en- sure his safe return."34

Warfare among the Jicarillas often involved the seizure of captives, either for vengeance satisfaction or cultural integra- tion. Adult male captives "were tied to posts and slain by women with lances," but captive women and children found themselves incorporated into the band. A captive woman "could not be molested until she had been brought back and a ceremony … performed over her," probably some form of adop- tion that established her subordination within the Apachean levirate. Even with this adoption, captive women "were not considered fit wives. They were sexually used, and sent from camp to camp to do the heavy work. Their children by Apache men, however, were recognized as Jicarilla" and "accepted into Apache life."35 We shall see that this second-generation inte- gration appears nearly universal among the indigenous groups in question and provides another constraining structure in

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captive women's decisions to remain within the host society even when offere

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