Gift Giving: The Burden of Sustaining Peace with the Spaniards

This paper compares Native/Spanish peace processes in northwestern Mexico through missions and military presidios, from the late seventeenth- to the early nineteenth- centuries. Early peace negotiations took place by way of missionary work, while they occurred in secular settings during the eighteenth-century. Both approaches entailed negotiation and reciprocity among Natives and Spanish invaders/settlers, through the practice of gift-giving. Natives gave gifts through their labor, foodstuffs, and military service; while Spaniards provided cattle, meat rations, tobacco, and cloth.

I study three cases based on different ethnic groups from Sonora, which provide examples of peace through gift-giving: The agricultural Akimel O’odham (Pima), who settled in mission towns and later established their own auxiliary company, while remaining on their riparian homeland; the seafaring and desert-dwelling Comca’ac (Seri), who experienced peace in both mission and presidio complexes located beyond their homeland on the coastal desert, but within the range of their territory; and the equestrian Ndé (Chiricahua Apache), who settled in presidio complexes outside the range of their mountainous territory, and became military allies of the Spaniards. Native/Spanish interactions were, therefore, complex and diverse.

Indians and Spaniards had different expectations and perceptions of peace, and thus, the burden of sustaining it was different on both sides. The Natives exercised their own knowledge and agency by seeking peace, and they were certainly benefitting from receiving gifts. Spanish settlers, however, benefitted from these processes, mainly because gift-giving brought more revenue into Mexico’s northern borderlands. Spanish settlers were also able to profit from indigenous labor, encroach on indigenous lands, establish a commercial monopoly based on gift-giving, and gain military strength through indigenous alliances. Therefore, this paper provides a bridge between imperial and local understandings of Indian/Spanish relations, and helps further understand why Indians negotiated peace through gift-giving.