TARAHUMARA RESISTANCE TO MISSION CONGREGATION IN NORTHERN NEW SPAIN, 1580-1710 by Roberto Mario Salmén Western New Mexico University ABSTRACT The 17th century Tarahumaras of northem Mexico were victims of two Spanish policies: relocation in religious missions and the military policy for Indian assimilation through their dependence on frontier society. Both missionaries and settlers sought to Europeanize Indians while clearing the way for effective expansion of mining, ranching, and farming. After limited success, the Tarahumara revolted. And as Indians discovered their own strengths and weaknesses, they sustained effective resistance and accommo- dation to Spanish civilization. Native lands of the Tarahumara Indians included the present Mexican state of Chihuahua, southeastem parts of Sonora and the northeastern half of Sinaloa. From their first contact with Spaniards who advanced beyond the edge of the Chichimeca frontier in 1580, and to the present, the Tarahumara have been able to accommodate and resist foreign intruders without radically altering their way of life. But within accommodation there lay a critical spirit and disguised subversive action; and accommodation, indeed, did not preclude the frequent appearance of its apparent opposite — insurrection. Accommodation, in this case, is best understood as a way of accepting unavoidable aspects of Spanish civilization and Christianity without succumbing to the pressures for cultural change. This study, then, will examine Tarahumara accommodation to formal religious missions and aspects of Tarahumara culture which enabled them to assert resistance, and set limits to the Tarahumara surrender of self-identity. The Tarahumara insurrections of 1652, 1690 and 1697 did not represent a sharp break with the process of accommodation.’ Instead these three rebellions represented political actions which the Spaniards chose to define as the only genuine resistance since they alone directly challenged ETHNOHISTORY 24/4 (Fall 1977) 379380 ROBERTO MARIO SALMON colonial society. Therefore, from that limited viewpoint, those activities which early chroniclers call lying, stealing, feigning, and fleeing qualify at best as prepolitical and at worst as apolitical (Pascual 1651: 179-200). Thus, it is not surprising that 17th century Spaniards measured Indian culture with reference to military proficiency. In the province of Nueva Vizcaya, they presupposed that there were three Tarahumara bands: the first extending from the Fuerte to the Conchos River: the second from the Conchos to the Papigéchic River; and the third from there to unexplored territory of the Sierra Madre Occidental. Within these regions the Indians were of a single culture. but lived in dispersed settlements called ranchertas. Peoples living to the north and east of the Tarahumara were identified as Toboso and Concho; those to the south and west as Tepehudn and Varohiv. Considered anthropologically, these Spanish denominations were wholly arbitrary, since the Spanish confused geographical concentration with cultural unity (Mota 1940: 168-189; Sauer 1934:56-58). One outstanding difference among these bands, as Spaniards and their Indian allies saw them, was the central bands’ ability - Upper Tarahumara .- to resist effective conquest, not only throughout the 1600s, but as it developed into late decades of the 18th century. The part of Tarahumara culture with which this essay is concerned is that part which the Spaniards. using purely geographical criteria, defined as those Indians between the Conchos and Pagigéchic rivers, and even more precisely. the area of western Chihuahua which today comprises the province of Guerrero. This small area, some 60 miles long and 30 wide, became the focal point of Indian resistance (Hackett 1923:2:219-227). The first decades of Tarahumara colonization saw small settlers-stockmen type communities laboring to sustain their lands and defend the formal religious missions; the basis for subsequent discord was quickly established between civil and religious authorities. Although they had congregated Indian communities, authorities squabbled over the methods of assimilating the Indians into Spanish society. Also, neither side could gain much consolation from the difficulty of attracting a stable population to a hostile frontier environment.” In most cases, the problems continued and the missionary, presidio soldier, or waquero, became a more common sight in Upper Tarahumara (Navarro Garcia 1967:162-167). Gradually the Spaniards expanded colonial operations against the Tarahumara and proceeded to organize labor for silvermining, agriculture, and ranching. Since the Tarahumara were not considered as commanding necessary skills to participate in the development of large-scale enterprises for profit, they were not forced to labor for colonial society. Unlike the Yaquis or Mayos, they were not transformed into a permanent labor force. Instead, a part-time Indian worker developed who continued to draw the greater share of his livelihood from dispersed rancherra settlements (West 1949:72-74).Tarahumara Resistance 381 From the miner's or hacendado’s (“hacienda owner”) point of view, the Tarahumara remained primarily a labor reserve which could maintain itself at no cost to his enterprise. On the other hand, this served to maintain the important land-use pattems in Indian society. But lands in Indian hands had to be limited or they would not have possessed sufficient incentive to labor for frontier society. In this regard Spanish-Indian relations were not feudal. No form of bondage held the Tarahumara to civilian settlers. In the absence of such personal contact, only changes in general conditions of the rancherias could assure Spaniards of a sufficient seasonal supplement to ranching and agricultural pursuits. As a result Spanish settlers assisted the Society of Jesus in “congregating” the scattered Tarahumara into formal religious missions. And by restricting amounts of land in the hands of each religious mission to an area of six and one-half square miles, the crown obtained land for settlement of civilian settlers (Simpson 1938:4-5, 39, 154-157). Indians residing in these congregations were distributed as part-time labor to hacendados, who by law were permitted to oblige four percent of missionized Indians to work for them, provided they observed royal regulations regarding the going wage, provision of food during travel to place of work and “humane” working conditions. Regardless of regulations hacendados regularly exceeded the four percent quota and forced impress ment continued throughout the 1600s. Although Jesuits protested to the Crown, hacendados continued to squeeze labor out of the Indians while neglecting to follow royal regulations. In fact, in order to better manage the system, many hacienda owners located their large estates close to exploitable Indian communities (Hackett 1923:2:161-163). Whatever may have motivated civilian settlers, they paid lip service to a program for Indian civilization guided by religious orientation. For them, there were strong economic motives. Although the basic ideal of what settlers wanted to accomplish in Tarahumara country was defined as Christian conversion, they repeatedly interrupted religious conversion by their own meddling, the resulting conflict being generally resolved in favor of the formal religious mission. The highly independent Jesuit society pursued an ultimate goal of Indian religious conversion and their gradual assimilation into frontier society (Archivo Hidalgo de Parral 1699: expediente Tarahumara). Upon reflection, however, to settlers with memories of the Chichimeca War, the license and liberty the Crown allowed missionaries remained to be challenged. Many frontiersmen were openly hostile to Christian conversion of the Tarahumara. It is not difficult to understand why mission fathers had difficulty in implementing the congregations. If there had been no hostility or suspicion, they quite possibly might have pacified the Tarahumara (Dunne 1948:81-87). This aspect of the religious missions deserves further examination. Civilian settlers regarded missionaries with distrust, not only because their