Reimagining Nomadic Native Lifeways on New Spain’s Silver-Mining Frontier

In the mid-to-late sixteenth century, the region that became New Spain’s northern silver mining frontier was the site of diverse groups of nonsedentary peoples, including Zacatecos, Tepehuanes, Guamares, and Guachichiles, homogenized under the Spanish exonym “Chichimeca.” Descriptions of Chichimecas lifeways prior to Spanish conquest campaigns against them (c. 1550-1587) come to us through the filter of European eyes as these groups left no written or textual records. This presentation problematizes these European accounts, while nonetheless utilizing them to arrive at nonsedentary peoples precontact lifeways. I utilize ethnographic accounts, spatial geography, and graphic texts to reconstruct territories held by native peoples, gendered lifeways and rituals, and the types of native shrubbery, wildlife, and vegetation that constituted their environmental landscape. The paper also employs digital cartography to illustrate the movements of peoples and the chronology of their yearly settlement patterns. Ultimately, this panel hopes to contribute to a more detailed and nuanced understanding of nonsedentary peoples in Spanish America.