War and Reducción in Colonial Mexico’s Chichimecatlalli, 1590–1610

From the 1550s to the 1590s northern New Spain’s mining district witnessed a violent frontier war between Spanish soldiers and settlers and the autochthonous native peoples of the region. For indigenous peoples, it was a war to defend their lifeways and patterns of subsistence. For the crown, it was an offensive war to bring native peoples they considered rebellious and barbaric under submission. By the 1590s, a variety of political, economic, and environmental factors led native peoples to engage in peacemaking with the crown. As part of the peacekeeping terms native peoples were congregated into newly formed communities (or reducciónes) near Spanish population centers. This paper considers how native peoples responded to their new social conditions, arguing that even as they submitted to colonial rule they found opportunities for mobility and autonomy.