Pueblo Indians and Spanish Colonial Authority in Eighteenth-Century New Mexico

Tracy Brown's book is more ambitious than its title would have us believe. Properly speaking, its general subject is power as exercised by Europeans and Indians, both men and women, from precontact times through the end of the colonial period. It is true that the documentation is far more abundant for the eighteenth century than for the earlier period: many records were destroyed during the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. But Brown makes use of the archaeological record and interrogates the sources available for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to undertake a longue durée reconsideration of how the Pueblo peoples of New Mexico organized themselves, exercised power, and coped with the immense challenge of Spanish colonialism through a combination of tactical modifications, remarkable continuities, and pragmatic concessions.Pueblo Indians and Spanish Colonial Authority in Eighteenth-Century New Mexico revisits a number of strategies and coping mechanisms on the part of Pueblo Indians, such as “compartmentalization” — remaining secretive and aloof and retrenching into their communities in the face of growing Spanish control and demands — and “pueblofication” — the flexible adaptation of discrete European elements or institutions that were more compatible with Pueblo practices and worldviews. Yet Brown goes well beyond these general observations to show how Pueblo men and women, elite or commoner, adjusted differently to Spanish colonial authority. Rather than a neat process that can be reduced to one or two simple generalizations, Brown offers a repertoire of behaviors and invites future scholars to identify yet more tactics that have allowed the Pueblo peoples to survive as a distinct people for the last 500 years. Brown's intention is not to reduce or sanitize but to complicate and describe this process in an open-ended way. In short, she wants to replace the received master narratives of Pueblo adaptation and survival with a more flexible approach that can accommodate the many different behaviors of Pueblo peoples that can still be found in the archival record.Notwithstanding this fragmenting approach, the author actually focuses on a handful of Pueblo strategies. For example, central to Brown's discussion is the contention that the Pueblo political sphere was segregated between “foreign” and “domestic” affairs — that is, each pueblo evolved a political arena geared toward relations with Spaniards and a separate sphere more properly devoted to intra- and inter-Pueblo affairs. This separation of spheres not only allowed Pueblos to keep Spaniards in the dark about their internal affairs but also had crucial class and gender consequences. For instance, Brown shows that one of the most consistent observations about Pueblo life throughout the colonial period is that elite males dominated the “foreign relations” sphere and generally excluded nonelite males and, above all, women. Women held informal or consultative roles, but (as much as it can be ascertained from the existing documentation) they did not play formal roles. Brown goes on to pose the crucial question of whether this pattern arose during the colonial period as a result of Spanish insistence on dealing with male Pueblo officials. The author's assessment is that male dominance in the political sphere was a carryover from the precontact period that was then reinforced after the arrival of European outsiders who had clear gender notions about who should wield power.In a subsequent chapter, Brown examines the alternative paths to power available to commoner women and men through sorcery and witchcraft. Because Pueblo women did not hold office in Pueblo government, they sought to gain power and prestige in a different arena by offering their healing services to Spanish women. Brown labels this type of sorcery and witchcraft “interpersonal” and draws a contrast to the ways in which commoner men exercised these same activities in a more “politicized” way with the aim of influencing Pueblo men in power. Once again, Brown finds some precontact precedents for these activities that were subsequently adapted to the Spanish colonial world. The final chapter is devoted to intimate relations and yet again demonstrates the multiple ways in which Pueblo peoples coped with church and government demands.Pueblo Indians and Spanish Colonial Authority in Eighteenth-Century New Mexico forces us to rethink Spanish colonialism from the perspective of the Pueblo peoples conceived not as undifferentiated communities of Indians but as more realistic groups of commoners and elites as well as men and women. In the process, Brown offers a nuanced portrait of the Pueblo peoples and their struggles, internal divisions, and desire to endure and meet the challenge of colonialism

Ancient history · Archaeology · Colonialism · Commoner · Elite · Ethnology · Ideology · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Sociology · Anthropology · Archaeology and Natural History · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Latin American history and culture · Law