31.8 America: a.d. 1601 to 1700  (Page 14/16)

Trouble between civil and church authorities was not long in appearing. By 1680 the population in the area had increased to 2,800 and there were towns at Pecos, Taos, Santa Cruz, San Marcos, etc. but all were evacuated when an Indian revolt of Zuni, Hopi, Tano and Keres Indians, under Pope', revolted. Some 2,000 refugees reached El Paso. Pope' made himself governor, but his bad reign and a long drought led to disarray, allowing recapture of this area of present day New Mexico and western Texas by Diego de Vargas rather easily in 1692. (Ref. 198 , 83 )

Alonso de Leon had established a mission at San Francisco de los Tejas, near the Neches River in 1690, but it was abandoned in 1693. (Ref. 198 ) Father Eusebio Kino visited the Pima Indians on the Gila River in southern Arizona in 1697 and, finding them friendly, he established a mission near present day Tucson, in 1700. The Pima were experts with bow and arrow and had war clubs and rawhide shields. (Ref. 38 )

The far west

The Great Plains and the far west were certainly moderately populated with many and varied Indian tribes in this century, but in the absence of contact with whites little accurate information is available. The reader is referred to the l8th and l9th centuries.

Mexico, central america, and the caribbean

Already Mexican Society was divided into several classes based chiefly on race and color. First there were the Indians, living primarily in their villages under the rule of the caciques, with their numbers greatly dwindled. The second class was the Creoles, a white population born in Mexico and descendants of the conquistadores. Next were the Mestizos, who were half -breeds, half Indian and half white and finally the Gachupines, natives of Spain sent over for administration. Instead of being incorporated into Spanish civilization the Indians regarded all white men as their enemies and the Creole landowners encroached on the Indian villages' land. Government attempts to protect the Indians were foiled by corrupt officials and Indian ignorance of the law. (Ref. 167 ) The few remaining primitive Chichimec Indians of the north Mexican desert were still being hunted and run to earth "like wild animals". (Ref. 260 )

The decay of the Spanish Empire in Europe did not enable the Creoles to usurp powers of self-government, however, because they were themselves victims of the Gachupin bureaucracy. This bureaucracy tapped the wealth produced by the labor of the native population. On the surface all was peace, passivity and decay, but explosive forces were slowly developing. Communications remained primitive; there were no roads; and Mexican industry was suppressed in part because of jealousy of the Spanish merchants. Mexico was unable to develop any native commercial class.

The drop in the Indian population of Mexico in just 5 or 6 generations was almost unbelievable although the exact figures are still being debated. Tannahill (Ref. 211 ) says that by 1605 central Mexico had only 1,075,000 people, down from 25,000,000 at the time of Cortez and that the decrease was due to war, economic upheaval, exploitation and new diseases, representing one of the most comprehensive human catastrophes of the world. The deliberate encouragement of alcohol in the forms of pulque and mezcal among the Indians must also have been a deteriorating factor. State revenue from pulque in New Spain was equal to one-half the revenue from the silver mines. (Ref. 260 ) William McNeill (Ref. 140 ) writes that the entire population of Mexico was, at 1,600,000 in 1620, a 90% drop with drastic psychological and cultural consequences. Faith in established institutions and belief s cannot withstand such disaster and skills and knowledge disappear. Thus, it was easy for the Spaniards to transfer their language and culture to the New World.