Exploring the Colonial History of New Mexico Through Artifacts Ramón A. Gutiérrez What relationship does a painting of Saint Anthony of Padua on an elk-skin hide have to an iron spur? On the surface, probably little conjoins them other that they were both produced by artisans in the Kingdom of New Mexico during the eighteenth century. Archaeologists often refer to such material objects as “dumb traces,” not because they are stupid or irrelevant in any way, but because they are mute and silent and do not readily yield their meanings or their grander cultural significance without some prodding and pondering on our part. Such artifacts require interpretation.1 For that, one must first contextualize these objects within denser webs of history, within networks and assemblages of the things humans once made. The broader historical and cultural milieu that led to the creation of this hide painting of Saint Anthony and of the iron spur begins with the Spanish conquest of America, initiated by the 1492 voyage of Christopher Columbus, which ultimately led to the vanquishment of indigenous peoples throughout the New World. Spain’s overseas empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries extended north from what is now Chile as far as New Mexico and Arizona, and from Cuba westward to the Philippines. 45 The geographer Alfred B. Crosby called the cultural processes unleashed by this colonization the “Columbian exchange,” a set of reciprocal transfers of ideas, technologies and goods that created an infinite array of blendings and bor- rowings, of mixings and meldings, of inventions and wholesale appropriations that were often unique and specific to time and place.2 The New Mexican religious im- age of Saint Anthony of Padua holding the infant Christ was painted with local pigments on an elk-skin hide in 1725, possibly by an indigenous artisan (Figure 1). For almost a century it adorned the mission church at Santo Domingo Pueblo, a town of indigenous sedentary agriculturalists located some twenty miles south of Santa Fe. There, the town’s residents venerated this image, along with that of Figure 1. Painting on elk hide of Saint Anthony of Padua with Christ Child, used in the Santo Domingo Mission Church, New Mexico, possibly produced by a Native American neophyte artist around 1725. Franciscan friars set up missions in New Mexico to convert Native Americans to the Catholic faith. The missions used local resources and materials, like this elk hide in place of canvas, in their proselytizing efforts. National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, gift of Dr. J. Walter Fewkes. 46 Gutiérrez Saint Dominic, the town’s patron saint, as well as many other images of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and angels and saints that still adorn the church’s sanctuary. The iron spur was cast in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century in New Mexico (Figure 2). Spurs then, as now, were used to prod horses to move in the direction and at the speed their riders commanded. Horses were of strategic importance to the sixteenth-century conquests of the Aztec and Inca empires, to the seventeenth-century conquest of the Kingdom of New Mexico, to the Pueblo Indians’ victory during their 1680 revolt against Spanish rule, and to the terror and pillage the equestrian Comanche and Apache inflicted on the kingdom’s residents in the eighteenth century. Spain’s explicit goal in the conquest of the Americas was the Christianiza- tion of its newly acquired indigenous subjects, bringing the sweet words of the Gospel and the message of eternal salvation to persons they saw as living in the darkness of the devil. Never far from this ambition was the equally mesmerizing dream of gold that animated Spanish soldiers. Having traveled to the Americas mostly at their own expense, they were intent on profiting from their invest- ments. For this they needed indigenous labor, which technically belonged to the Crown. Mexico’s first viceroy, Don Luis Velasco, succinctly explained the situa- tion in 1608 when he wrote, “no one comes to the Indies to plow and to sow, but only to eat and loaf.”3 For such leisure and lordship to become reality, Spaniards had to maximally exploit their indigenous charges even if it meant working them to death. Christianizing the natives and permitting the settlers’ personal enrich- ment were thus always in tension as contradictory imperial goals, pitting clergy against colonists, and together contesting the power of local Crown officials over the distribution of resources produced by indigenous hands. Would the labor of America’s natives be put to construct magnificent churches and to tending Figure 2. Iron spur, likely of Spanish manufacture and used by Pueblo Indians, produced in the seventeenth or early eighteenth century. Horses and other large beasts of burden were unknown to Native American peoples before European contact. The Pueblo adopted a horse culture from the Spanish, and subsequently used equestrian warfare to successfully expel the Spanish from Pueblo land in a 1680 revolt. National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. Exploring the Colonial History of New Mexico 47 church flocks and crops? Or would it be used creating the wealth and leisure the conquistadors sought? In the Kingdom of New Mexico this debate was particu- larly shrill and intense in the seventeenth century, creating the conditions that led the Pueblo Indians to rebel violently in 1680, producing the first successful overthrow of Spanish rule in the Americas. The Kingdom of New Mexico was initially explored on a grand scale in 1540 by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, but was quickly abandoned as poor in min- erals and too costly to settle. When rich veins of silver and gold were discovered in north central Mexico in 1552, in what are now the states of Zacatecas and Gua- najuato, Crown resources were channeled to the extraction of this wealth. Sev- eral decades passed before the Crown’s gaze returned to New Mexico, now at the behest of the Franciscan friars eager to Christianize the souls there. King Philip II’s conscience was apparently stirred by these Franciscan pleas and in 1598 he dispatched them with a small group of solider-settlers. While the friars sought to Christianize the Pueblos, the goal of Philip’s ministers was to Hispanicize them, to transform them into productive workers, creating the supply chains neces- sary to provision the mines with food, hides and tallow, cotton and wool cloth, and ceramic vessels. Indeed, to this day Pueblo Indian rugs, blankets, and pot- tery remain the hallmarks of their craft—sophistication first mastered to satisfy Spanish commercial needs in the seventeenth century. The image of Saint Anthony of Padua holding the infant Christ on one arm, often with a book of sermons nearby, was but one of the many religious objects the Franciscans took to New Mexico to adorn the mission churches they built. Its function was purely didactic: to teach neophytes through the exemplary lives of the saints the various models of virtuous living and paths to Christian salva- tion they could emulate. Saint Francis of Assisi started the Franciscan Order in 1209. Saint Anthony joined him in 1220. It is said that he sought membership in the order because he was very deeply moved by seeing the headless bodies of five Franciscans who had been martyred in Morocco while spreading the word of God that year. From this point on, Saint Anthony dedicated his life to the conversion of heretics through simple, eloquent preaching. The book he is often depicted hold- ing is his famous Sermons for Feast Days, still used as the inspiration for many Franciscan sermons. Legend holds that thirty years after Anthony’s death his body was exhumed. His corpse had turned to dust but his tongue and vocal cords were intact, as vibrant and colorful as if he were still alive. His tongue was placed in a reliquary and displayed in the Padua basilica that bears Anthony’s name. 48 Gutiérrez Figure 3. Iron spur rowel detail. The rowel, used to prod the horse to perform, is designed with a combination of tear drops and hearts. Large rowels, like this one, were common in the New Mexico region. National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. Traditionally, Saint Anthony’s miraculous intercession is petitioned when one wants to recover something lost, be it a thing, person, or even a spiritual good. The Franciscans who went to New Mexico clearly saw the Pueblo Indian as spiritually wayward and lost. The Puebloans were worshiping idols, living de- bauched lives of sinfulness, practicing incest and sodomy, and obviously under Satan’s command, or so the friars said. By cultivating the veneration of Saint An- thony as part of their larger Christianization project, they were sure that through this saint’s intercession the Pueblo Indians would be found, baptized, and led to Jesus Christ. The iron spur we examined at the start finds its meaning in the realm of animal husbandry, in warfare, and in human domination over people and ani- mals (Figure 3). It offers us a small window into the larger objectives of the con- quest. This process of domination proceeded exploitatively through the incor- poration of native peoples into the polity as tribute-paying royal subjects who were required to toil as virtual slaves. Their Hispanicization would be assured by learning to speak Spanish, by adjusting to a new work regime, by mastering the planting and harvesting of Spanish crops, and the breeding and tending of the animals brought from Spain and central Mexico. By acquiring knowledge of animal husbandry, through the raising of horses, mules, cows, pigs, and sheep, and by using European technology to forge iron plows for planting, and spurs to Exploring the Colonial History of New Mexico 49 control horses, the Pueblo Indians someday would become productive Spanish citizens.