Left: close up view of the Province of Nueva Vizcaya; Right: Valle de San Bartolome in dark outline showing major settlements.  Maps and text are taken from The north frontier of New Spain by Peter Gerhard. 

22 Valle de San Bartolome

|Introduction|Encomiendas|Government|Church|Population & Settlement|Sources|

Introduction

Today occupying the southeast corner of Chihuahua state, this jurisdiction is traversed from south to north by the Río Florido, a principal affluent of the Conchos (Atlantic drainage). Several fertile valleys watered in parts by springs enter the Florido from the west. The land slopes gently from a range of hills (peaks of 2,000 m) in the southwest to 1,300 m where the Florido makes its exit. A slight rainfall (250-300 mm, nearly all in summer) produces a cover of grass and forage plants (huisache, mezquite). East of the Florido is a dry, rugged area of stark mountains and bolsones that remained beyond Spanish control.

At contact this was a meeting place of people speaking three languages, Tepehuan in the southwest comer, Concho in the northwest, and Toboso in the east. The Tepehuanes and Conchos probably did a little farming but were mainly hunter-gatherers, while the Tobosos were more primitive.

Franciscans began work among the Indians in the 1560s. In the same decade Spaniards settled in the better-watered spots and introduced wheat and cattle to supply the miners of Indé and Santa Bárbara, employing as farmhands Tepehuanes, Conchos, and (somewhat later) Tarahumaras. Before 1604 a settlement was formed at Atotonilco in an attempt to collect the wilder desert tribes in a Christian community, but this was followed by over a century of conflict. It was not, indeed, until the last years of the eighteenth century that the successors of the Tobosos, the Apaches, agreed to lay down their arms

Encomiendas

Grants of encomiendas, in the sense of a system of recruiting Indian laborers both seasonally and as a permanent work force on Spanish farms and haciendas, were made here in early years. Atotonilco, apart from being a center of conversion, served as a labor depot, as did the Indian community at Valle de S Bartolomé itself. Conchos, Tepehuanes, and more rarely Tobosos either came in voluntarily or sometimes were rounded up by force at planting and harvest time and were distributed to the Spaniards who needed them. This might be on a perennial (encomienda) or temporary (repartimiento) basis. Work gangs were often formed by people from the same rancheria.

By the early seventeenth century most of the haciendas had a core of resident workers, and much of the planting and harvesting was done by salaried Tarahumar migrants. It was the scarcity of docile labor, rather than repeated decrees forbidding forced service, that effectively ended both encomienda and repartimiento

Government

At first subject to the alcalde mayor of Sta Bárbara, who kept a deputy here, Valle de S Bartolome became a separate alcaldía mayor in the 1640s. As head of the militia in a frontier area, the magistrate was also "capitán a guerra," and from ca 1715 to 1751 he commanded the garrison formerly at Parral but during that period quartered at S Bartolomé. With the founding in 1687 of a presidio at S Francisco de Conchos (q.v.), this jurisdiction was much reduced, and after 1753 it was further confined when the commander of a new garrison at Guajuquilla assumed judicial and political functions in the east (Almada. 1968, p. 291). After the Guajuquilla troop was moved to the Río Grande in 1774, the lower Florido valley continued to be an alcaldía mayor, and from 1788 both Valle de S Bartolome and Guajuquilla were subdelegaciones in the intendancy of Durango.

S Miguel de las Bocas (see Real del Oro) may have been in this jurisdiction on occasion (Lafora, 1958, p. 65).

Church

A Franciscan hospice at Valle de S Bartolomé may have acquired the category of convento in 1570, but if this occurred the doctrina was soon deserted to be reoccupied by the friars ca 1575.7 Thereafter the beneficiary of Sta Bárbara retained ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the non-Indian population in the valley, and the Indian doctrina was taken over by the Franciscans, who belonged to the custodia and later the missionary provincia of S Francisco de Zacatecas. Apparently when the secular priest moved to Todos Santos, the Franciscans proceeded to build a monastery at Sta Bárbara where they remained in the late 1590s and early 1600s ministering to all races and visiting nearby haciendas. Shortly after Durango became a bishopric in 1622, we find the Franciscan headquarters once more in the "pueblo" of S Bartolomé, and the beneficiary again residing at Sta Bárbara. Thereafter the "Spanish" (secular) and Indian (regular) congregations coexisted in the same territory, Valle de S Bartolomé becoming a separate benefice in 1638 (Gallegos, 1969, pp. 94-95; Porras Muñoz, 1966a, p. 333). 

The Indian mission of S Buenaventura Atotonilco is said to have had a resident Franciscan from 1619, but it had a violent history, having been sacked and abandoned on several occasions (Arlegui, 1737, p. 90; Ocaranza, 1939, pp. 14, 23; Robert West, 1949, pp. II, 105). In 1642-1656 both Franciscan doctrinas here were supposed to be secularized, but there was a suit about this from which the friars emerged victorious (Gallegos, 1969, pp. 94-95, 107). Indeed, the Franciscans of S Bartolomé claimed spiritual jurisdiction over the Indians in neighboring parishes, notably the mine workers at Parral, and it was not until 1755 that they relinquished their doctrinal functions in the valley, retaining only the mission of Atotonilco until after Independence. Meanwhile, the beneficiary of S Bartolomé in 1678 had deputy curates at Campos del Tule (Roncesvalles) andthe hacienda of Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Conchos. In 1755 he annexed the Franciscan doctrina and extended his parochial limits to S Francisco de Conchos. After the presidio of Guajuquilla was eliminated in 1774 its chaplain was replaced by another teniente subject to the beneficiary of S Bartolomé.

Population and Settlements

At the end of 1622, the Franciscan in charge of this area reported that there were 812 Indians in his doctrina of whom 200 were at the pueblo of Atotonilco and the rest were scattered about on the Spaniards' estates. What seems to be another version of the same report, with an upward adjustment for infants, gives the total as 1,003 persons. By this time there had been half a century of contact during which the original population had been depleted by disease, violence, and emigration, while other Indians (principally Tarahumaras) had settled here as free laborers. Mota y Escobar ca 1605 found "many" Tepehuanes and Conchos, and the mission of Atotonilco was founded for the purpose of reducing the Conchos and Tobosos to civilized life. Occasionally 200 or 300 of these desert people would gather at the mission for months or even years, and work a season or two on farms before returning to the warpath; by the late seventeenth century there were very few of them left (cf. Griffen, 1969, pp. 46-47). My estimate of the contact population here west of the Florido is 7,000.

Spaniards acquired land first in the valley below Sta Bárbara and soon after in the valleys of Cienega. S Gregorio, Valsequilla, and the Florido itself. The flourishing complex of irrigated farms described by Mota y Escobar (ca p 1605) and the herds of cattle introduced as early as the 1560s became the principal source of supply for the nearby mining camps. The center of this community was the pueblo of Valle de S Bartolome (1950: Allende, villa), but by 1645 the 40-odd vecinos were dispersed in 14 haciendas producing 20,000 fanegas of wheat and 5,000 or 6,000 fanegas of maize, most of which went to Parral. The plague of 1644 was followed by a major rebellion of the desert tribes, and for a time the hacendados retired to Parral (Griffen, 1969, pp. 10-16; Huerta and Palacios, 1976, p. 312). Subsequently the principal work force was made up of Tarahumar Indians working for wages, with Negro and mestizo overseers. There were only 10 or 12 labradores in 1678, but in 1707 the jurisdiction contained 150 Spanish vecinos and 58 "mulattos, collotes [officially a person with 1/2 Spanish, 1/4 African and 1/4 Indian heritage], Negros y Mestisos," representing perhaps 1,250 persons.

By the early eighteenth century it was apparent that the desert tribes that still occasionally raided farms in this area were few in number, and the authorities, having failed to reduce these people to "reservations," rounded up as many as they could and marched them in chains to Vera Cruz; those that survived were transported to the Antilles (Griffen, 1969, pp. 63-70). The remaining work force of Tarahumaras was greatly depleted in a measles epidemic in 1728 (half of the able-bodied men died, leaving only 30 workers at Atotonilco). The problem of hostile Indians returned when hordes of Apaches moved into the deserted area to the east, causing much damage here by the lace 1740s. To counteract these disasters, more Indian salaried workers and a few Negro slaves were brought in, and in 1753-1774 a presidial force was quartered at Guajuquilla, a site once occupied by an hacienda (Almada, 1968, p. 291; Griffen, 1969, pp. 44, 69-70). This made it possible to extend colonization along the lower Hondo, where Guajuquilla (Nuestra Señora de las Caldas, renamed Santo Cristo de Burgos in 1774;1950: Jimenez, ciudad) became a flourishing center for the haciendas. The total population of the two jurisdictions grew from roughly 2,800 in 1745 to 3,233 in 1760, 5,246 in 1766, 6,511 in 1777, 9,601 in 1790, 15,042 in 1806, and 16,558 in 1820. In these figures are included the Tarahumar mission at Atotonilco, which dropped from 303 persons in 1778 to only 108 in 1809; other Indians were scattered about in the 38 haciendas reported in 1806.

Sources

The description of Bishop Mota y Escobar (1940, pp. 199-200) is complemented by the census of 1604. An Indian census summary of December 1622 listed and roughly located Spanish estates and their owners; a similar report of 1632 is cited by Porras Muñoz (1966a. pp. 277-278). There is a brief but informative document of ca 1645, followed by the report of Bishop Escañuela who was here in 1678, and testimony of a governor's visit in 1696. The report of Governor Fernández de Cordoba's inspection in 1707 contains a list of vecinos. Still another official visit occurred in 1716. A head count of the Indians just after the epidemic of 1728 has survived.

Villaseñor y Sánchez (1952, II, pp. 350-351) condensed a report of ca 1745, while Bishop Tamaron (1937, pp. 121-123) went through here in 1760, as did Lafora (1958, pp. 64-67) in 1766. For the late colonial period, there are padrones of 1777, 1778 (Atotonilco only), and 1779, as well as summaries of the population at Atotonilco in 1790 and 1809. Robert West (1949) wrote a well-documented study of the historical geography of the region. Algier used several local archives to form a cogent picture of frontier society here during the colonial period. Griffen (1969) gives a detailed account of the warfare between Spaniards and desert Indians.