The Nahuas and New Mexico

More than any other European power, Spain was remarkably adept at incorporating indigenous peoples into its American colonial projects. Recent scholarship in this vein has tended to highlight the activities of indigenous allies—or “Indian Conquistadors” as one notable publication casts them—in conquests throughout Mesoamerica. Yet conquered Natives also assisted the Spanish empire beyond that region’s boundaries, and the roles they played as agents of imperial expansion were more varied and complex than the conquistador rubric allows. This paper traces the exploits and experiences of indigenes from Mexico in Spain’s colonization of the vast northern kingdom known as Nuevo México. It argues that from the first conquest expedition in 1540 to the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, Mexican natives shaped New Mexico’s development in significant ways and inserted themselves powerfully into the colony’s economic and social life.

In this paper, I wish to articulate a broader range of activities and experiences for indigenous shapers of empire in the north—one that recognizes their initial empowerment as Spanish military allies but which also acknowledges a myriad of other, more vulnerable, positions. As craftsmen, healers, and sexual partners, indigenous people from Mexico were vital members of the community who exerted economic agency and gained clout in colonial New Mexican society. However, they were also frequently exploited and victimized by both Spaniards and other Indians. When the Spanish Inquisition came to New Mexico, for instance, Mexican Indian women were implicated in a murderous witchcraft scandal. And later, in 1680, the famed Pueblo Revolt’s first flurry of violence was directed at a Santa Fe neighborhood occupied by Indians from Mexico. If we are to envision indigenous allies as empowered conquerors, we must also reckon with the darker side of their engagement with the empire.