Indigenous Efforts Against Colonialism

26.3.3: Indigenous Efforts Against Colonialism

After the Spanish conquest of Central America, there were several indigenous uprisings against colonial rule, most notably the Mixtón War and the Chichimeca War. The latter shifted many of the policies and attitudes of the Spanish toward the indigenous populations.

Learning Objective

Examine some of the indigenous uprisings against the Spanish

Key Points

  • After the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, the Spanish created the colony and kingdom of New Spain, which placed the indigenous populations at the bottom of the racial hierarchy.
  • Territories populated by indigenous nomadic peoples were harder to conquer, and once the natives got hold of horses, many populations evaded Spanish rule for much of the colonial period.
  • Other natives in densely populated areas suffered continual abuse and oppression under the Spaniards, leading to several revolts.
  • The first revolt, named the Mixtón war, pitted the viceroy of New Spain, Don Antonio de Mendoza, against the Caxcanes Indians, who began a rebellion in 1440.
  • After two years of fighting, with the natives repeatedly repelling the Spanish army, the stronghold of Mixtón fell to the Spaniards and the rebellion was over.
  • Skirmishes continued, and by 1550, another war broke out against the Chichimeca Indians. It lasted for forty years and led the Spanish to take an approach of assimilation rather than enslavement and abuse.

Key Terms

Chichimeca War
A military conflict between Spanish colonizers and their Indian allies against a confederation of Chichimeca Indians. It was the longest and most expensive conflict between Spaniards and the indigenous peoples of New Spain in the history of the colony.
assimilation
The process by which a minority group gradually adapts to the customs and attitudes of the prevailing culture and customs.
Mixtón War
A war fought from 1540 until 1542 between the Caxcanes and other semi-nomadic indigenous people of the area of northwestern Mexico against Spanish invaders, including their Aztec and Tlaxcalan allies.

Indigenous Uprisings in New Spain

After the conquest of central Mexico, several major Indian revolts challenged Spanish rule. The first was in 1541, the Mixtón war, in which the viceroy himself, Don Antonio de Mendoza, led an army against the uprising by Caxcanes. The other was the 1680 Pueblo revolt, in which Indians in 24 settlements in New Mexico expelled the Spanish who left for Texas, an exile lasting a decade. The Chichimeca war lasted over fifty years, 1550-1606, between the Spanish and various indigenous groups of northern New Spain, particularly in silver mining regions and the transportation trunk lines. Non-sedentary or semi-sedentary Northern Indians were difficult to control once they acquired horses. In 1616, the Tepehuan revolted against the Spanish, but were quickly suppressed by the Spanish. The Tarahumara Indians were in revolt in the mountains of Chihuahua for several years. In 1670 Chichimecas invaded Durango, and the governor, Francisco González, abandoned its defense.

In the southern area of New Spain, the Tzeltal Maya and other indigenous groups, including the Tzotzil and Chol, revolted in 1712. It was a multiethnic revolt sparked by religious issues in several communities. In 1704, viceroy Francisco Fernández de la Cueva suppressed a rebellion of the Pima Indians in Nueva Vizcaya.

 

Mixtón War

The Mixtón War was fought from 1540 until 1542 between the Caxcanes and other semi-nomadic indigenous people of the area of northwestern Mexico against Spanish invaders, including Aztec and Tlaxcalan allies. The war was named after Mixtón, a hill in the southern part of Zacatecas state in Mexico that served as an Indigenous stronghold.

Although other indigenous groups also fought against the Spanish in the Mixtón War, the Caxcanes were the “heart and soul” of the resistance. The Caxcanes lived in the northern part of the present-day Mexican state of Jalisco, in southern Zacatecas and Aquascalientes. They are often considered part of the Chichimeca, a generic term used by the Spaniards and Aztecs for all the nomadic and semi-nomadic Native Americans living in the deserts of northern Mexico. However, the Caxcanes seem to have been sedentary, depending upon agriculture for their livelihood and living in permanent towns and settlements.

The first contact of the Caxcan and other indigenous peoples of the northwestern Mexico with the Spanish was in 1529 when Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán set forth from Mexico City with 300-400 Spaniards and 5,000 to 8,000 Azteca and Tlaxcalan allies on a march through Nayarit, Jalisco, Durango, Sinaloa, and Zacatecas. Over a six-year period, Guzmán, brutal even by the standards of the day, killed, tortured, and enslaved thousands of Indians. Guzmán’s policy was to “terrorize the natives with often unprovoked killing, torture, and enslavement.” Guzmán and his lieutenants founded towns and Spanish settlements in the region, called Nueva Galicia, including Guadalajara in or near the homeland of the Caxcanes. But the Spaniards encountered increased resistance as they moved further from the complex hierarchical societies of Central Mexico and attempted to force Indians into servitude through the encomienda system.

In Spring 1540, the Caxcanes and their allies struck back, emboldened perhaps by the fact that Governor Francisco Vásquez de Coronado had taken more than 1,600 Spaniards and Amerindian allies from the region northward with him on his expedition to what would become the southwestern United States. The province was thus bereft of many of its most competent soldiers. The spark which set off the war was the arrest of 18 rebellious Indian leaders and the hanging of nine of them in mid-1540. Later in the same year, the Indians rose up to kill, roast, and eat the encomendero Juan de Arze. Spanish authorities also became aware that the Indians were participating in “devilish” dances. After killing two Catholic priests, many Indians fled the encomiendas and took refuge in the mountains, especially on the hill fortress of Mixtón. Acting Governor Cristobal de Oñate led a Spanish and Indian force to quell the rebellion. The Caxcanes killed a delegation of one priest and ten Spanish soldiers. Oñate attempted to storm Mixtón, but the Indians on the summit repelled his attack.

The Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza called upon the experienced conquistador Pedro de Alvarado to assist in putting down the revolt. Alvarado declined to await reinforcements and attacked Mixton in June 1541 with 400 Spaniards and an unknown number of Indian allies. He was met by an estimated 15,000 Indians under Tenamaztle and Don Diego, a Zacateco Indian. The first attack of the Spanish was repulsed with ten Spaniards and many Indian allies killed. Subsequent attacks by Alvarado were also unsuccessful and on June 24 he was crushed when a horse fell on him.

The Spanish authorities were now thoroughly alarmed and feared that the revolt would spread. They assembled a force of 450 Spaniards and 30 to 60 thousand Aztec, Tlaxcalan and other Indians and under Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza invaded the land of the Caxcanes. With his overwhelming force, Mendoza captured the city of Nochistlan and Tenamaztle, but the Indian leader later escaped. Tenamaztle would remain at large as a guerrilla until 1550. In early 1542 the stronghold of Mixtón fell to the Spaniards and the rebellion was over.

The aftermath of the Indians’ defeat was that “thousands were dragged off in chains to the mines, and many of the survivors (mostly women and children) were transported from their homelands to work on Spanish farms and haciendas.” By the viceroy’s order, men, women, and children were seized and executed, some by cannon fire, some torn apart by dogs, and others stabbed. The reports of the excessive violence against civilian Indians caused the Council of the Indies to undertake a secret investigation into the conduct of the viceroy.

An indigenous painting depicting the Mixton War. Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza and Tlaxcalan Indians battle with the Caxcanes.

Mixtón War Viceroy don Antonio de Mendoza and Tlaxcalan Indians battle with the Caxcanes in the Mixtón war, 1541-42 in Nueva Galicia.

Chichimeca War

The Chichimeca War (1550–90) was a military conflict between Spanish colonizers and their Indian allies against a confederation of Chichimeca Indians. It was the longest and most expensive conflict between Spaniards and the indigenous peoples of New Spain in the history of the colony.

The Chichimeca wars began eight years after the Mixtón War. It can be considered a continuation of the rebellion as the fighting did not halt in the intervening years. The war was fought in the Bajío region known as La Gran Chichimeca, specifically in the Mexican states of Zacatecas, Guanajuato, Aguascalientes, Jalisco, and San Luis Potosí.

The conflict proved much more difficult and enduring than the Spanish anticipated. The Chichimecas seemed primitive and unorganized but proved a many-headed hydra. Although the Spanish often attacked and defeated bands of Chichimecas, Spanish military successes had little impact on other independent groups who continued the war. The increase in number of Spanish soldiers in the Gran Chichimeca was not entirely favorable to the war effort as the soldiers often supplemented their income by slaving, thus reinforcing the animosity of the Chichimeca. Moreover, the Spanish were short of soldiers, often staffing their presidios with only three Spaniards.

As the war continued unabated, it became clear that the Spanish policy of a war of fire and blood had failed. The royal treasury was emptied by the demands of the war. Churchmen and others who initially supported the war of fire and blood now questioned the policy. Mistreatment and enslavement of the Chichimeca by Spaniards was increasingly seen as the cause of the war. In 1574, the Dominicans, contrary to the Augustinians and Franciscans, declared that the Chichimeca War was unjust and caused by Spanish aggression. Thus, to end the conflict, the Spanish began to work toward an effective counterinsurgency policy which rewarded the Chichimeca for peaceful behavior while taking steps to assimilate them.

The Spanish policy that evolved to pacify the Chichimecas had four components: negotiation of peace agreements, converting Indians to Christianity with missionaries, resettling Native Americans allies to the frontier to serve as examples and role models, and providing food, other commodities, and tools to potentially hostile Indians to encourage them to become sedentary. This established the pattern of Spanish policy for the assimilation of Native Americans on their northern frontier. The principal components of the policy of peace by purchase would continue for nearly three centuries and would not be uniformly successful, as later threats from hostile Indians such as Apaches and Comanches would demonstrate.

Attributions