A Spanish Soldier's Estate in Northern Mexico (1642)

S OON AFTER a certain Captain Francisco de Castro died in Othe north Mexican mining town of San Pedro de Guanacevi, some time between November 6, 1642 and February 3, 1643, an inventory was taken of his property that sheds new light on the economic life of New Spain's desolate and dangerous northern frontier in the seventeenth century. Unlike the early silver-mining areas of the south such as Taxco and Pachuca, with their docile populations of Aztecs, Zapotecs, Tarascans and Otomis, agricultural peoples accustomed to tribute and labor obligations, the mining communities established in the central and northern areas of Mexico such as Guanajuato, Zacatecas, Sombrerete and Parral were obliged from the outset to adopt a more militaristic posture as defense against the dreaded Chichimecs and other hostile nomads who roamed the northern plateau. These far-flung reales de minas, with their motley, oft-transient population of Spanish miners, traders and officials, and an imported labor force of free Indian migrants from the south supplemented by a moderate number of Negro and mulatto slaves, each required a strong local militia to repel attacks, guard convoys, patrol outlying farmsteads and, after every raid, to give pursuit. The training and effective command of this militia required in turn a resident staff of officers and sergeants, whose duties, however, allowed them plenty of time to engage in sundry other occupations to supplement their meager and often irregular pay. Records of t-he real of San Joseph del Parral abound with the names of sergeants, lieutenants, captains, maeses de campo and even generals who were! at the same time also miners, merchants, farmers or cattlemen.' Typical of such military entrepreneurs

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• Tarahumara Resistance to Mission Congregation in Northern New Spain, 1580-1710

  Roberto Mario Salmon•Ethnohistory•1977

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