Cowlonialism Colonialism, Cattle and Landscapes in 16Th Century New Spain

Franklin de Jesús Martínez Martínez

Cowlonialism Colonialism, cattle and landscapes in 16th century New Spain

Master’s thesis in Global Environmental History

Abstract Martínez Martínez, F. d. J. 2020. Cowlonialism: Colonialism, cattle and landscapes in 16th century New Spain. Uppsala, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History.

Cattle are not endemic to the American continent. Nevertheless, they are present and thrive in many landscapes, all the way from Canada to Argentina. The narratives about the process of colonisation of the American continent include human actors, but there is very little literature in comparison that deals on the influence of cattle in landscapes in the continent. In this thesis, I will contribute to the discussion about more-than-human processes of landscape modification, by analysing archival sources from the New Spain. This region included a big part of the West of the United States, Mexico and Central America. The period I analyse, between 1550 and 1602, represents the first decades of encounter between the Spanish settlers and indigenous communities, in the region of New Spain, where the Spanish established administrative institutions to manage their empire. The documents that I analysed showcase the transformations that cattle caused in the landscape, from how indigenous people lived, to what plants and crops could be cultivated. Inspired by Multi-species studies, ethography, and the concepts of “animal” and “landscape”, I use Actor-Network Theory to create a thoroughly described network of relations. In my analysis, I find that cattle influenced the activities that were performed in the landscape, as well as the ways that other actors interacted with each other. These actions, complemented by religious, economic and cultural ideas that circulated during the XVI century, would form what I call Cowlonialism, a regime of ideas and practices where cattle invade the land and displace their inhabitants, exercising power over other actors.

Keywords: Cattle, Archive, New Spain, Actor Network Theory, Ethography, Multi-species studies.

Master’s thesis in Global Environmental History (45 credits), supervisors: Jacob Bull and Anneli Ekblom, Defended and approved spring term 2020-05-29. © Franklin de Jesús Martínez Martínez Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Box 626, 75126 Uppsala, Sweden

Acknowledgments

This thesis is the result of two long years, in which I learned much more than I expected not only of Environmental History, but of myself. I could not have done it alone, though. I had the constant support of my partner, Embla Holmgren, who lifted me up countless times and with whom I could not have gotten through these past two years. To her, my deepest thanks and my unwavering love. To my mom, Diana, my grandmother, Dercelys, my brother, Camilo, and my dad, Franklin, thank you for talking to me and supporting me when I was lost in my thoughts and when I thought that these things were too much. A big thank you to Jenny, Niklas and Miriam Holmgren, who took me under their wing and taught a big part of what I now know about Sweden, the outdoors, fika, and lyx. Thanks to them I could also live and focus on my studies, and their always welcome advice often gave me the necessary light in times when I was not sure of things. To my supervisors, Jacob Bull and Anneli Ekblom, whose comments helped me polish my ideas and make to where I have. Thank you for your patience and support. To Eloísa Berman and Sergio Latorre, whose sharp comments and conversations challenged me and my visions of the world. Thank you for your support. I would not be who I am without your guidance. Finally, to my classmates, whose support, chats and fika helped me make it through the cold winters. Thank you, Laura and Eleanor, for having been there, and for continuing to be there. Our conversations and company supported me and warmed me when I needed it the most.

Contents

Introduction ...... 6 Cattle, the New Spain, and the Archive ...... 9 Theory and background ...... 11 Animal Geography...... 11 A multi-species study of cattle ...... 14 Landscapes ...... 15 Actor-Network Theory ...... 16 Agency ...... 20 Power ...... 20 A discussion about Actor-Network Theory ...... 21 Methodology ...... 24 The Archive and the Search ...... 25 Selection of documents ...... 29 Organisation of the information...... 29 A second selection ...... 30 A third selection and transcription ...... 30 Coding ...... 31 An ecology of change: the Indigenous and Spanish Actor-Network ...... 34 The New Spain before cattle: activities and actors ...... 34 Living in a disrupted landscape: indigenous people and non-human animals ...... 36 Spanish settlers and non-human animals ...... 38 Cattle, value, and landscape modification ...... 39 Cattle and Catholicism ...... 39 Expanding the network: explanations and incitations ...... 40 Shifting relations: cattle, indigenous people, officials and the King ...... 42 Hierarchy in the network: the King and his officials ...... 42 Power and Agency in the New Spain: Who is the King, anyway?...... 50 Work relations in the New Spain ...... 51 Where should cattle be located in the landscape? ...... 52 The landscape of the New Spain: before and after cattle ...... 56 The landscape for Spanish settlers: a transhumant ecology ...... 56 Nature is big and vast: we all fit in the new land...... 60 European domestic animals are superior ...... 63 Crop robbers: modifying the land by eating and walking ...... 65 Conclusion ...... 68 References ...... 72 Appendices ...... 77 I. Transcribed documents with descriptive codes, in chronological order ...... 77 II. Table. Descriptive codes ...... 106 III. Table. Analytical codes ...... 110

IV. First selection of documents ...... 111 V. Second selection of documents ...... 116

List of figures and tables

Figure 1. Sluyter’s map explaining the regional-scale relations of transhumance. p. 54.

Figure 2. Sluyter’s map showing the number of cattle ranches present in the region of Veracruz. p. 56.

Figure 3. The Paradise, by Roelandt Savery (1626). p. 58

Figure 4. a cow in a hacienda in Veracruz. 1778-11-05. Dibujo de una vaca sin pelo y de piel vistosa, con su cría, nacida en una hacienda de Veracruz. p. 59

Introduction

Where I am from, in the Colombian Caribbean, cattle are a common sight. Even in big urban cities, like Barranquilla, my hometown, one can go to the market and see cattle walking around. The countryside is no exception. Cattle are, without a doubt, an intrinsic part of the rural areas of Colombia. I never thought there was something odd about it. The Looney Tunes, cartoons that were shown in the national TV, showed white and black cows grazing idyllic valleys in a calm and peaceful landscape. I remember very vividly how disappointed I was when I saw my grandfather’s cows, beige and with big lumps in their backs, very different from those that were shown in the television. Moreover, the place where my grandfather lived, Palomino, in the flooded valleys of the Depresión Momposina, was not idyllic or peaceful. The landscape was wet, filled with mosquitoes and snakes. I was only 5 years old then, and I was already thinking about what the rural should look and feel like, relating it directly with cows and with the images that I saw in the television. The realm of cattle had green pastures, in remote places where meat, milk and cheese were produced. Their smell became the smell of the rural, their sight the undeniable image of the countryside, and their presence the assurance that people should be nearby. I started questioning the presence of cattle and other non-human species in the Colombian Caribbean in 2017, when reading and writing about banana plantations in the town of Ciénaga, Magdalena, Colombia. It was fascinating to read about how species of plants and animals were, in fact, part of structures of oppression: the banana plant, in comparison with local American crops, consumes so much water that makes the existence of other vegetation virtually impossible (Goebertus, 2008). This made it impossible for campesino communities to grow any other sort of crop, making them dependent on the work and salaries provided by the United Fruit Company. A similar situation happened with the seeds of grass brought from Africa, that adapted well to the American environment and became dominant in the department of Magdalena, allowing the introduction of cattle in the area. Before the area was cleared and grasses started growing, however, having cattle was impossible. The jungle was too deep, too difficult to cut down with the strength of workers, machetes and fire (Posada Carbó, 1996). Although this happened as recently as the end of the 19th century, it was difficult for me to imagine these landscapes differently. The idea was challenging: cattle had only recently arrived to the landscape, and they had modified it to such a great extent that, for me, it was almost impossible to imagine a landscape where cattle was not part of it. The modification of the landscape by cattle had also happened in other areas of the Caribbean region of Colombia. The department of Córdoba, as I would realise when working in the region, was also recently modified by the introduction of cattle. The town of Berástegui, in the end of the XIX century, became the first place1 to be used for the massive production of cattle in the Caribbean region, where grasses, barbed wire and cattle formed a network that transformed an otherwise inscrutable jungle (Posada Carbó, 1986).

1 In the end of the XIX century, Berástegui was only an hacienda. 8

These two experiences marked my interest in the subject of environmental history, for they showed how the transformations in landscapes are more-than-human processes. The narrative and research surrounding landscape modifications has focused mainly on how the human settlers acted and how they exercised power over people and the environment. However, as the previous examples seemed to suggest, non-human agents could also modify landscapes. The creation of plains and fields was not the result of human actions only, but also the result of the interaction between cattle and grasses, for example. Their encounters could be seen in the territory and the consequences were still present in the Caribbean Coast of Colombia, and moreover, perhaps all over the American continent. The analysis of these interactions could throw light into how landscapes are created, but more importantly, into how non-human animals can influence and modify the environment.

Cattle, the New Spain, and the Archive The fascination I had with the modification of landscapes was encouraged by the contents of a course on human-animal relations. This course was the perfect excuse to start studying more about animals, how they act, and how to study them and other non-human species. During this learning experience, cattle came up as a species that occupies several spaces in society: they are providers, working animals, symbols of civilisation, and in some cases they are sacred. The variety of characteristics that are imbued into cattle by humans are relevant because the variety of them reveals that the relation between cattle and humans is very tight, leading back to thousands of years ago. Cattle, however, were not in the American continent, not until 1492 and the subsequent exploration travels where they were brought and bred throughout the entirety of the territory. My exploration of the subject was led mainly by readings of Crosby (1972) and Anderson (2006), as well as Armstrong (2002), all of whom I will discuss later. Each one of the authors mentioned the process of colonisation of the American continent, and particularly the first decades, as key moments where the contrasts were more clear. From the views that indigenous people could have about cattle and other livestock, to the way Spanish and other settlers interacted with the local fauna and flora, the first decades of encounters are rich with descriptions and observations from colonisers, priests and others. Each description is filled with wonder, and the material that each author described fuelled my imagination and set me in a path to look for documents and sources that could give more light into what happened during these first decades. Moreover, in my own readings on the subject, I found that there were few studies in animal geography that discussed the issue of landscape modification in Latin America. If I worked on the subject and geographically located my case study in the region, I could not only contribute to the field of animal geography and environmental history, but also use my knowledge in Spanish and my ties to the region to uncover new documents that included more descriptions and details of the meeting between cattle and other actors. After analysing my options, I decided to focus my search on the Archivo General de Indias, which as I will explain in my Methodology chapter, is one of the largest archives of Spanish documents in the world. I let the archive guide me to cattle. I roamed around letters, maps, royal orders and tickets of passage between Spain and America, among other hundreds of documents that gave me an image of life in a period of around 350 years. The region of New Spain, nowadays Mexico, proved to be very rich in documents, with detailed accounts of the encounters between cattle, indigenous people, Spanish settlers and other non-human species.

I found many documents in my search, but out of the hundreds I found, I chose 12 that represented a particular time in the region of New Spain, in the second half of the XVI century, where the encounters between cattle and other species are thoroughly registered. I transcribed and analysed each one of these sources, contributing in the process to a different, more complete narrative, of the process of landscape modification in the American continent. The archival sources serve as a starting point, in which I trace cattle by taking rigorous note of how they behave according to these texts, how they were mentioned, who wrote about them, how the encounter is described, the descriptions surrounding the species, as well as the ideas that seem to emanate from the writings. With these traces I did a ‘lively cartography’ (Bull et al., 2018) of cattle, as I will explain in my Methodology chapter. My research question was: What role did cattle play in the process of landscape change in the American continent? The question is the red thread that guides the analysis and the point in which archival data, theoretical sources and my own analysis weave together. Following the main research question, I created three sub-questions that narrowed down the main research question, as follows: 1. How is the network between cattle and other species described in the sources? 2. How was the network of human-animal relations after the arrival of cattle into the American continent? 3. What meanings were formed in the network following the arrival of cattle in the American continent? The thesis will be sub-divided in chapters, starting with this Introduction, where I have laid down the subject of study and my research questions. The following chapter will be about Theory and Background, where I will explain the theoretical sources that I explore and develop throughout my thesis. These sources include theoretical frameworks such as Multi- species studies and ethography, the concepts of “animal” and “landscape”, and also Actor- Network Theory. I also discuss the concepts of agency and power and how I deal with them throughout the text, as possible points that can be further debated. Afterwards, in the Methodology chapter, I focus on the process of finding archival sources and how I chose, sorted through and organised each one of the documents I found. It is accompanied by theorists who have talked about the management and methodology of archives. The next three chapters are based on each one of my sub-questions, as stated before. In the first one, An ecology of change: indigenous and Spanish actor-networks, I develop and describe the network between cattle and other actors in the New Spain, animate or inanimate, human and non-human. After this, in the chapter Shifting relations: cattle, indigenous people, officials and the King, I develop the second sub-question, talking more deeply about the network of human actors and the relation they had with cattle and other species, focusing also on the way meanings shifted as cattle arrived in the continent. Finally, in the chapter The landscape of the New Spain: before and after cattle, I explore the different ideas that can be found in the documents and that circulated throughout this time, from the abundance of land and resources in the American continent, to the way scientists thought of domestic animals. I conclude the thesis with some more analysis, and I propose a concept that can potentially be applied in other contexts where non-human animals modify landscapes, a concept that I call Cowlonialism.

Theory and background

To start my research, I focused on knowing more about the two subjects of my research questions: cattle and landscapes. In the first place, cattle, as a non-human species, presented challenges to the way I have been used to doing research. From my background in Political Science, I often faced questions that dealt with human beings as the only subjects who act. Their actions had consequences that reverberated in society and the environment. Political Science, in this sense, is strictly human-centred. However, it is not only political scientists who deal with humans. Most social sciences are in fact devoted to the study of human beings and their actions in different settings. Landscapes presented a similar situation. These are commonly described by their physical attributes, like the type of ecosystem that is predominant in them, the annual rainfall, the minutes of sun, the composition of the soil, among other elements that are mainly the focus of study of natural sciences, like Geology, Ecology, and Physical Geography. The landscape was divided in parts, analytically, and the definition was the combination of these parts. In my question, however, I wondered about the relation between cattle and the landscapes of the American continent. Not about the particular conditions of the biology of cattle that interacted with the ecosystem of a particular zone, but cattle and the landscapes.

Animal Geography I first started with cattle and thought of how to define them. What are they? A word immediately came to my mind: animals. I started to delve into my preconception, critically testing the reach of it and looking for literature that analysed deeply what this concept entailed. Some authors that wondered about it were Philo and Wilbert (2000), who present an overview of the concept of animal and of the field of Animal Geography. In their introductory chapter to a compendium of studies about animal places, the authors explain the themes that Animal Geography works on, the origin of the field, and the potential for the discipline to create new stories about animals. They argue that the definition of “the animal” is somewhat open, for it depends on the historical relations between humans and animals. For example, if a human is called an animal, it can signify that it is literally non-human, without “humanity”, a being that is not fit for living in society. The word is commonly used by media when speaking about killers, rapists, and in general, criminals. But in some other contexts, it can also signify that a person is very wild or incredible at what they do. Sports players, athletes, and even musicians, are sometimes called “animals” to exemplify their power and ability at playing. In English, for example, the acronym “GOAT” is used extensively to signify the “Greatest Of All Time” in a particular sport, but the word is literally the name of a livestock animal. The wordplay is sometimes used in purpose, and even I was quite confused, as a non-native English speaker, about the use of the word to speak of athletes. These examples bring about two different ways of thinking of what “the animal” is, but are nevertheless centred on what humans think and feel. They do bring up, however, contrasting ways in which the question about “the animal” can be answered. This is part of what Philo and Wilbert (2000) call “a human-geographical approach to animals”. That is, to “...be alert of the differing ways in which this question is

11 answered within different human societies, as tied into their particular economic, political, social, cultural and psychological horizons” (p. 8). However diverse views can be on animals, there have been general themes shared by a big part of the world. In the West, the natural sciences have been in charge of defining “the animal”, creating detailed descriptions and explanations of the actions and behaviours of different animal species. These descriptions would become disciplines like Zoology, Ecology and even Zoogeography, as sciences that spoke of animals but that always saw them as an “other”, an object to be researched and observed. As Philo and Wilbert (2000) say, “the legitimate spokespersons for animals have become the biological sciences” (Philo and Wilbert, 2000, p. 9). This process of othering, as Philo and Wilbert (2000) explain, citing Said (1978, p. 54-55, 71-72), is key into understanding human-animal relations. Othering happens in two ways, by placing animals, “them”, relative to humans, “us”, elsewhere, both conceptually and geographically (Philo and Wilbert, 2000). Conceptually, it means that animals are to be studied in their own discipline, for humans are not the same as them. It implies that concepts are not to be the same between humans and animals, and that those concepts used to explain humans, like “culture”, are specific and special to them, speaking only of human agency and actions, for example (Philo and Wilbert, 2000, p. 10). Speaking of the physical realm, it means that animals are to be in a different place than humans, be it in the countryside, in marginal places in cities (like sewers, garbage dumps), or the wild. Only certain animals, like domesticated species such as dogs or cats, are allowed in human spaces. This type of differentiation, the authors explain, has in fact been extended to other branches of knowledge, but it has not always happened. In fact, it has been used since around the sixteenth and seventeenth century, by imbuing humans with particular qualities, attributes and capacities that differentiate them from animals (Daston, 1995, cited in Philo and Wilbert, 2000). In other words, the idea that humans and animals are different is not inherent to every society on the planet. Instead, it is the product of particular cultural and social constructs, especifically European. The implications of this thought are groundbreaking and set a stepping stone in Animal Geography, for it implies that even though the traditional paradigm of science is the separation between human and animal, there are other types of world-views that can include animals, and even more, any sort of non-human thing. Animal Geography, in the terms that Philo and Wilbert (2000) expose, opens a set of tools and ideas that have not been previously explored by other disciplines. The animal geographer, as the authors call themselves, can create instead of the traditional, rigid, scientific stories of what an animal and a human are, new narratives and stories, where the places of interaction are expanded. In my case, it means that I will not be looking at cattle from the points of view of Ecology, or Biology, or Zoology, or Zoogeography. I will be looking at cattle and ask about what makes cattle an animal, how they were defined by Spanish and indigenous people, and moreover, I will be giving cattle the central spot of the research. Cattle are not an object, in my view, to be seen and researched and taken apart. They are an actor that interacts with other actors, that exercises agency. I will be exploring this concept later on in the chapter, when I speak of Actor-Network Theory. Another author that has critically analysed the concept of “animal” is Armstrong (2002). The animal, argues Armstrong, is a concept as important as others such as “nature”, “culture”, and “society”. These concepts all have in common that they all were used to justify colonialism, and even more, were the basis for fields of studies like Anthropology, Sociology and Law (Ingold, 1994, cited by Armstrong, 2002). The concept of “animal”, as I also explored with Philo and Wilbert (2000), is such a complicated concept that its inclusion generates consequences in the definition and ontology of humans themselves. Armstrong proposes that

“the animal” should be studied just like “the human” has, but instead recognising their capacity to change and influence their environment. In my particular case, the inclusion of cattle means acknowledging that the processes of landscape modification, and in general, of colonisation, are more-than-human processes. With my research question I acknowledge the possibility, and during this thesis, I will detailedly explain how such process happened. Moreover, animals have the ability to modify landscapes in complement, and sometimes in contrast to, the actions of human actors. In the case of narratives of colonisation in the American continent, where the colonisation process has been said to be mainly the product of humans, I instead expand the scope of actors by including other species that contributed, resisted or complemented the colonisation of the continent. Another aspect that sets apart Armstrong (2002) is his contrast between Animal Studies and Postcolonial Theory. The author implies in his text that Animal Studies should in fact be included in the field of Postcolonial Theory, because it is precisely the subject of Animal Studies the reconstruction and inclusion of others, who have been left out of the mainstream colonial narratives. Nevertheless, explains Armstrong, Postcolonial Theory has resisted the inclusion of animals, for there is a “suspicion that pursuing an interest in the postcolonial animal risks trivialising the suffering of human beings under colonialism” (Armstrong, 2002, p. 413). This suspicion sets apart Animal Studies from Postcolonial Theory, because it reveals that the latter still keeps the preconception of human exceptionality, a colonial thought that claims that human beings are the only rational beings, who can feel and think, where as animals cannot feel or think in the same way as humans have. Thus, the suffering of animals cannot be compared with that of humans (Armstrong, 2002). Nevertheless, the difference can be surpassed, and Animal Studies and Postcolonial Theory can indeed work together. The author proposes the concept of “The Postcolonial Animal”, a way of looking at non-human species where agency, defined as “the capacity to affect the environment and history”, creates a bridge, a collaboration, a conversation, between Animal Studies and Postcolonial Theory. To do this, explains the author, it is necessary to create “sharp, politicised, culturally sensitive, and up-to-the-minute local histories of the roles that animals and their representations have played – or been made to play — in colonial and postcolonial transactions” (Armstrong, 2002, p. 416). In other words, it is necessary to create a new narrative of the colonial and the postcolonial, where the non-human animal is seen as an actor in a place, who acts and reacts and resists, collaborates or contradicts other things and beings and ways of living. All of the previous observations by Philo and Wilbert (2000) and Armstrong (2002) can be used to speak of cattle. First, it places cattle in a relation with the context in which they are living. Cattle relate to other species, animate and inanimate, and in that way their actions have different consequences depending on who they relate to. Their existence is constantly being created and co-created with the species that surround them, through alliances or contradictions. For instance, the role that cattle have in India, is very different to the role that cattle has had in Ethiopia, and has been very different to the role that cattle have had in Sweden, because of the different relations that cattle engage in with different actors. Following this idea, I expand the role of cattle as an “animal”, breaking the barrier of othering that places cattle away from every other being, and instead seeing cattle in the many roles that they can be: as a builder, explorer, walker, traveler and even as a coloniser. To include cattle in research is part of a process of recognition, of seeing landscapes and our views of the world as incomplete without including “the animal”.

A multi-species study of cattle To create new narratives that included other non-humans, I explored van Dooren, Kirksey and Münster (2016), who speak of multi-species stories. These multi-species stories are narratives where “being is always becoming, becoming is always becoming-with” (p. 2). This means that ontology is no longer simply about what is, but about what one becomes in different states, with others, at different times. If there are no others, there is no being, no becoming. A species can be only as it relates to other species. The authors speak of species not in the exclusive, naturalist, scientific way of calling non-human animals, but they refer to “any relevant gathering together of kin and/or kind” (Dooren, Kirksey and Münster, 2016, p. 5). A species can thus include non-human animals and even inanimate things, who are also part of the process of becoming together. The proposal of van Dooren, Kirksey and Münster (2016) is relevant as it paves a way to define the animal by re-defining what being means. The authors do not consider “the animal” as an essential concept, instead extending the idea to include groups of other animate and inanimate species, all of whom become together with “the animal”. In the case of cattle, for example, it includes the working conditions of cattle, their capacity to collaborate with humans, the technologies used for them to walk and to carry things (wagons and agricultural tools, for example), and also other species of animals that can often be associated with cattle, like chickens, dogs, goats, horses, and other livestock. Cattle are not only cattle per se, but they are cattle for they relate to other species and co-create the world. There are different ways of creating these new stories, the authors argue. There are some researchers that do critical analysis of scientific literature; others who, from their own scientific domains, trespass to the other, their research subjects, and create new readings and experiences of “the animal”; there are others who, through fieldwork and ethnography, seek to understand what others, like indigenous communities, hunters and farmers, think and experience and create with other non-human animals; and there are also artists and performers, who push the boundaries of places and concepts like the laboratory and the museum to re- think and re-evaluate what “the animal” is, how we humans live, and how we coexist in shared worlds with other species (van Dooren, Kirksey and Münster, 2016, p. 7-10). The diversity and multiplicity of approaches shown before is proof of the creative work that must be done in order to generate new narratives. These perspectives stay with the complexities of reality, surpassing in this way the explanatory power of rigid essentialist concepts. The creators of multi-species stories, instead, “stay with the trouble” (Haraway, 2016, cited by van Dooren, Kirksey and Münster, 2016, p. 11) and try to “meaningfully navigate one’s way through the complexity of worlds in process” (van Dooren, Kirksey and Münster, 2016, p. 12). The creative work lies thus in the thinking and imagining of new meanings and descriptions that can precisely stay with reality, with cattle, with the relationships that they have formed and that are continuously changing. It means that I have to explore what it means to be a cow, to understand the world that was created by cattle coming and roaming the American continent. In this new narrative, cattle are connected, related to other species of beings and things, from indigenous people, to Spanish settlers, species of plants and animals, sciences, religions, cultures and technology. The process of co-becoming, in relation to me, as a researcher, can also be called ethography, the “storying of animist worlds” (van Dooren and Rose, 2016). Ethography is a way of capturing the complexities of the encounters in a larger-than-human world in written form. Just like ethnographies capture ideas and the reality of the human, ethographies aim to “develop and tell... stories in ways that are open to other ways of constituting, of responding to and in a living world” (van Dooren and Rose, 2016, p. 85). 14

The word ethos in ethography refers to “broad styles or ways of life” (van Dooren and Rose, 2016, p. 80), that include more-than-human things not only of the animal or plant worlds, but also inanimate things, like seeds, the soil, rain, the sunlight, among other elements of life. Ethos is a word that includes “all of the diverse modes of engagement, entanglement, and cobecoming” (van Dooren and Rose, 2016, p. 80) that can indeed explain reality in a way that has not been done before. A relevant part of van Dooren and Rose (2016) is their view of these ethea, as “embodied ways of life” (p. 81). For the authors, to engage in thinking of these ways of life is to think beyond the scope of the biology of any species, instead focusing on the “differential biosocial becomings — the evolutionary and developmental intra-actions — of organisms and their spaces in coconstitutive relationship with others” (p. 81). The idea is then that animal species are not determined by their biology, but instead they are the product of the process of entangling and relating with every other species. There can thus be multiple ways of relating and living, that change and are shaped depending on different entanglements, all joined together and forming what the animal becomes. For me, the process of doing ethography means to directly engage with the species in question, to become-witness (van Dooren and Rose, 2016, p. 89). It implies that in my own research process, I must be attentive to the ways, sometimes hidden, where cattle might be changing these worlds, through their interactions and relations with other species. It is a new “mode of encounter” (van Dooren and Rose, 2016) where I, as a human, engage with cattle in an open way, drawing different species and elements and ways of life into the narrative, giving way to more complex and lively stories of cattle, where the detailedness of their ethos is present. There is, in this process, a sense of “relationality and openness” (van Dooren and Rose, 2016, p. 86) to my research process, where cattle are not in isolation but always in connection to the worlds and to me. An ethography of cattle is a narrative about how cattle become through the written sources that I will analyse, made complex and lively by the recorded encounters between them and other actors, where I become-witness with cattle. And moreover, in my particular case, it is about the lives of cattle in the American continent, with their relations, alliances, contradictions, provocations, and other ways of relating to the different species that they found in the continent. It is a history of cattle but it is also a history of the worlds cattle created, of the new meanings that were created with their arrival into the American continent.

Landscapes The previous ideas on multi-species studies and ethography can be complemented by the concept of landscape. The concept of landscape is part of my research questions, and I included it because it is a category that allows to set the entanglement of cattle, as I discussed before, in a particular context and in a particular time. In that sense, I can talk about the specificity of the landscape of New Spain, for example, in the XVI century. In other words, I use the concept of landscape to ground my observations and analysis, so that my analysis is not as abstract as the previous section, but more detailed and attentive, sharp and local, as Armstrong (2002) proposes. The concept of landscape complements, in this way, the previous theoretical approaches. Ingold (1993) proposes that the landscape tells a story, of those who lived and dwelled in it. He calls it a “dwelling perspective”, where the landscape is “as an enduring record of — and testimony to — the lives and works of past generations who have dwelt within it, and in so doing, have left there something of themselves” (1993, p. 152). Ingold deepens the concept of landscape, where it is not only the physical characteristics that define it, such as the ecosystems 15 that form it, but also the actions of those who live on the landscape. In summary, the landscape is more than its physical characteristics, it is alive and full of the energy of its dwellers. A dwelling perspective brings together the landscape with those who live on it, joining them in an array of movements and interactions that shape all of those involved. The landscape is formed by an array of activities, performed by those who dwell in it, called a taskscape. The taskscape, as an array of activities, can be seen as constant movement, the forces that form the landscape task by task, dweller by dweller, day by day. Ingold uses the metaphor of music to showcase the movement of the taskscape, which to the author is sound. The sound of people talking and walking, of birds building nests, of workers cutting grass or building a house, of cattle moving carriages with food, and so on. The taskscape is in itself movement and change, for the activities are continuously changing depending on the season, the people involved, the weather, etcetera. The landscape, explains Ingold, is the embodiment of the taskscape, of activities that are continuously performed, deeply shaping how the landscape looks, telling the history of its inhabitants. The landscape, in summary, is a verb, not a noun (Mitchell, 2002, p. 1-2). If the taskscape was music, then the landscape is a movie, explains Ingold (1993). It continuously moves, showing different frames in different times with different dwellers. If the landscape is a movie, then time is also part of the landscape. Temporality is not the chronological way of counting, but more a continuous flow that perhaps has no beginning or end, but which can still be seen and experienced by those who dwell on the landscape. The relation between the landscape and the taskscape is not finished, always “in progress”, carrying on in time (Ingold, 1993). The concept of landscape and the previously discussed multi-species studies and ethography can be complementary. In my case, I will be doing a multi-species history of the landscape. Methodologically, it means that I could trace one particular species throughout the landscape, how it dwelled, the activities in which it engaged, how it interacted with other dwellers. This new narrative of cattle is based on what Ingold (1993) says: “each component enfolds within its essence the totality of its relations with each and every other” (p. 154). The concept of landscape can moreover serve as a bridge to open up a discussion about methodology. Particularly, about the approach that I will take during this thesis. I will be using Actor-Network Theory as a methodological framework that will allow me to include all of the above mentioned elements: the concept of “animal”, multi-species studies, ethography, and the landscape. Moreover, it will allow me to discuss the concepts of Agency and Power, which have been already been briefly mentioned and which are transversal to each one of the concepts I have already discussed.

Actor-Network Theory Actor-Network Theory (ANT) is a theoretical framework that prioritises the thick description of a network between actors. A network in the sense of the variety of links or filaments between actors that join them together and put them in alliances, conflicts, or many other types of ways of relating. It includes the actor, because the meanings that actors themselves construct change the network. In ANT, a network is not finalised or stable. This does not mean that it is chaos, but instead that it is constantly being shaped by the links between the actors, by the influence of other actors that come into the network, and by the new meanings that are constantly being produced. In this definition of network, there are no main and secondary paths, no necessary 16 or sufficient ways of communicating, or even internal or external actants to the network. Although the term “network” is often associated to electrical or computational networks, in Actor-Network Theory the network is in fact opposite to such understandings (Latour, 1996). In ANT, the metaphor is that of a fibrous, multi-dimensional set of connections that connect all actants at all points. It implies that there is a set of “fibrous, thread-like, wiry, stringy, ropy, capillary” connections, all of which explain the way social relations work (Latour, 1996). The contrast to this definition is that of society as a surface. In this way, the properties and characteristics of society are defined by concepts related to closeness (far/close), of belonging (inside/outside) and of scale (large scale/small scale). The proposal of Actor-Network Theory is in fact not to use such metaphors, and instead focus on the filaments that connect actors which make up social life. Whether something is close or inside or small scale is not relevant, but instead one can ask whether there are connections between two or more actors, how these actors influence each other, and what that means for the way the network works (Latour, 1996). Another part of the theory has to do with the actor. In simple terms, an actor refers to anything that can be the source of an action (Latour, 1996). This means that humans are not given the central place of analysis, but instead are placed in the same pot with everything else that makes up the world. Everything else can be, but is not restricted to, ideas, institutions, technologies, science, or just plainly, things. Theoretically, the inclusion of actors have to do with the preoccupation of ANT to deal with semiotics, with the construction of meaning. Semiotics dealt with meaning, analysing texts and discourses, productions of human beings that represented what reality was out there. What ANT does is to extend the range of analysis of meanings towards things, towards all that is not of human origin. In Latour’s words, it is an elevation: either an elevation of texts to the ontological character of things, or the elevation of things to the ontological character of texts. Either way, the analysis of meaning is an important part of Actor Network Theory, and it is in this sense that all of the above-mentioned characteristics are joined together. Based on the previous discussion, there are some points of debate that can only be addressed from Actor-Network Theory. If I was asked about Actor-Network Theory, for example, in the form of the question “How can meaning be analysed in a network?”, I would answer: through the explanations that actors express of the actions. An explanation, according to Latour (1996), is“ the attachment of a set of practices that control or interfere” between one or another actor. If the debate turned to wonder on how can any entity, human or not, explain or give meaning to actions, I would answer from an ANT point of view that it is done through the consequences that such actions have in the actors, and how the actions of the actors adapt or change, and sometimes resist, these previous actions. If I was asked about how ANT can be done, methodologically, I would answer that it is through the detailed description of the network. And finally, if the debate turned to the power of description to explain reality, I would say, as Latour (2004), that any good description holds in itself an explanation, so the difference is not relevant. There is nothing more than the network, and if the network requires any sort of explanation, then it needs to be extended to include more actors, more ideas, more actions. Actor-Network Theory sets itself apart from semiotics in this way, by affirming that actors construct meaning, connected by filaments that twist and turn and swirl and change. The work of the actors is included in the construction of meaning, which in a network takes the shape of “attributing, imputing, distributing action, competences, performances and relations” (Latour, 1996). They all construct, shape and modify meaning about other actors and themselves. The

17 actor is thus not stable or continuous, but flowing in relation to the actions and “trials” that they undergo with others. The methodological aspect of ANT, i.e. “the detailed description of these actions in the network”, is called by Latour (1996) “recording”. “Recording” means to describe thoroughly the detailed descriptions or explanations of the actions and consequences that such actions have between actors. To record is to save how those actions were performed, what actors were related by such actions, when those actions were being performed, and what explanations each actors gave to their actions. Research done under the umbrella of ANT requires to be precise, detailed, rigorously thorough, for it requires to record all sorts of interactions in order to analyse the complexity of the social. An example of how Actor-Network Theory can be used to analyse non-human animals can be the analysis by Callon (1983), in one of the first articles written with Actor-Network Theory as a framework. In simple words, Callon (1983) is analysing how three researchers, who went to Japan and learned about growing scallops (Pecten maximus) in a particular array of nets in Japan, tried to use this new technique in order to grow the species in France. For that matter, they tried to convince the fishermen of scallops in St. Brieuc Bay, in France, as well as their scientific colleagues, of the viability of their proposal. A simple story, where Callon shows the complexity of relations that take place and join all these actors together, including the scallops themselves. Callon (1983) calls his analysis a “sociology of translation”, where he traces the process of entanglement between actors by explaining, step by step, how they relate between each other and negotiate their existence and actions, creating in the process a particular network of meaning. In his analysis, the description of intentions, alliances and relations between actors is called “problematization” (p. 60); the actions done by each actor and how these actions create a particular set of relations between them all is called by the author a process of “intressement” (p. 62); and finally, the process of coordinating and defining the meanings, alliances and roles is called “enrollment”, which in the case in question, would have meant that the scallops could have grown in France as well as they did in Japan (p. 65). Nevertheless, explains the author, the success of the “enrollment” is not guaranteed, and the example in question shows that the scallops, in the end, could not be successfully grown in France just like they had been in Japan, due to the relations and alliances and the influence of other elements, like the contents of salt in the water and the timing of the relations. The previous “sociology of translation” can be complemented with what Latour called a “sociology of associations” (Latour, 2005, cited in Muller, 2015). It is through these associations that agency is forged, and in order to be able to act, different elements need to be joined together and create different types of relations (from alliances to simple provocations or insinuations) that, in turn, produce an actor-network (Muller, 2015). The different sets of alliances, moreover, can create situations where particular actors end up in relations of power. I will explore these two concepts, agency and power, more in-depth in the upcoming sections, but they are mentioned because they are a key part in the theoretical debate about the reach of Actor-Network Theory in explaining reality. To finalise this section, it is important to keep in mind that although Actor-Network Theory can take many forms, it is still a process of detailedly describing the relations between different actors. It is about “how to study things”, allowing the actors to show the way they act and behave, without imposing previously conceived thoughts on what the function of an actor should be (Latour, 2004). It is about seeing the actors and the consequences that they have, because without consequences, without the ripples that their actions cause, they would not be actors. The process of research in that case is a process of tracing and joining the dots of the 18 different types of relations that exist, which can be alliances, contradictions, mere provocations, incitations, or perhaps all at the same time. Description in a text, as Latour (2004) puts it, is in the end the way that social sciences show the results of their research. Good descriptions do not need an explanation, says Latour (2004, p. 67). If the description needs an explanation, then it is not a good description, and more attention needs to be paid to the way that actors are relating with each other. In this sense, the purpose of Actor-Network Theory is to let the actors talk and show what those relations are, creating in the process new insights on reality. In Actor-Network Theory, just like Multi- species Studies in the previous section, the researcher “stays with the trouble” (Haraway, 2016, cited by van Dooren, Kirksey and Münster, 2016, p. 11). Following this line of thought, there are other similarities between Actor-Network Theory and Multi-species Studies. Both points of view aim at engaging with the actor involved, to describe the relations the actor has with others, and how the actors together are joined and co-create each other, with the actions of one affecting the life and ethea of others. Multi-species Studies, however, are more inclined towards studies of animal species, and Actor-Network Theory is more general and does not focus necessarily on non-human animals. The relation between Actor-Network Theory and the concept of landscape is not as clear. Ingold (1993), as I explored in the previous section, sees the landscape as the collection of tasks that dwellers do. The landscape is a set of activities, that performed in time and in space change the landscape itself. The taskscape makes up the landscape. For Ingold, every element that performs an activity is in fact a dweller of the landscape. And dwellers can be of any sort: stones, trees, churches, that influence how other dwellers interact with others. From this point of view, the theorisation by Ingold (1993) is in fact complementary to the proposal of Actor- Network Theory. In the same way as the landscape includes the activities performed by its dwellers, in Actor-Network Theory the network is composed by the links between actors. To explain the landscape, or the network in a particular moment in time, is part of recording the filaments between actors that make up the network. Each actor has such filaments or connections with every other actor in the network, and participate, as previously said, in the construction of meanings in that network. Continuously constructed, with every actor participating in the formation of the landscape, the conceptualisations of ANT and landscape by Ingold (1993) prove to be useful in trying to join the explanations of a network and the modifications of the landscape of the American continent. Moreover, both conceptual theorisations prescind of using the metaphor of a surface. Although Ingold specifically uses the word landscape, it is never defined as a surface. The surface, and metaphors associated with it (far/close, small scale/large scale, inside/outside) are not used or encouraged. Instead, a diverse view of the landscape is put forward, where dwellers are analysed through their activities and the changes such activities bring about, as well as the influences such activities receive from the landscape and the dwellers themselves. It is not a one way route where the landscape is passive, but a two-way chain of influences and changes. With the relation between Actor-Network Theory and the concept of landscape cleared up, I will in the upcoming sections “stay with the trouble” and continue talking about key concepts that are transversal to Actor-Network Theory, Multi-species Studies, and the concept of landscape. I will address the concepts of Agency and Power, because they are categories that represent debatable points in the relations that I will be exploring between cattle and other species.

Agency The concept of agency can refer to the effects that actors have between each other. Actors, as previously explained, have the capacity to relate with one another. The issue of how to research non-human animals passes through the lens of what links are created between them and their environment, as well as other human and non-human entities. The discussion leads to define the concept of agency in order to explain the consequences that these links can have. Actor-Network Theory treats the concept of agency in a relational way, by analysing the effects that such relations have in the different actants in a network. As Carter and Charles (2013) put it, ANT “attributes agency to anything that has an effect, whether animate or inanimate”. This definition of agency, however convenient, presents an issue: analytically, the concept becomes too broad, as anything can have agency. What difference does it make, then, to use the concept of agency, if everything has it and everything has an effect on everything? Even if it was so, and it probably is, the concept as it is does not shed light on issues, or makes new possibilities of thought available (Carter and Charles, 2013), and in the case of this thesis, it becomes extremely difficult to analyse all of the effects that the presence of cattle had in the American continent as they arrived. Despite the criticism, which does not deny the basis of agency as defined by ANT, there are some solutions to the problem. Despret (2013) solves the impasse by explaining that “agency […] appears clearly as the capacity not to only make others do things, but to incite, inspire, or ask them to do things”. This means that agency is a way of influencing and shaping other actants ’decisions and actions. Moreover, it is not important to see whether everything influences everything, but to see that “influencing” can take many forms. The connections and alliances between actors become all the more important, because it is in the flow of inspirations, provocations, forceful mobilisations, and actions, that a network of actants is formed and where agency takes place (Despret, 2013). The French word agencement captures the definition better than the English equivalent: it is an adverb of form, a word that indicates a way in which relations are done, and it is why Despret ultimately calls it “agenting”: it is an action that can be passive for one actor, but which activates another, who in turn passively activates others, or actively makes others be passive, and so on. In the case of cattle, the metaphor takes a very concrete form. Despret (2013), citing Porcher and Schmitt (2012), shows how cattle engage at work by following rules, collaborating with their human counterparts and with other species, taking initiatives, anticipating actions, being “polite” by allowing the other cows to follow along and take their place, among other ways of acting that put them in connection with each other. Cattle are therefore not passive, but they engage in agenting, between themselves, other non-human species and humans. However, these actions are “secret”, or invisible, and only come up to the surface when cows act up and do not follow the rules, or are particularly violent, or try and avoid work. It is only then when their agency and their capacity is revealed. Agency is, in this way, only seen as a way of analysing the resistance of animals, but it can also be used, as Despret (2013) proposes, to analyse the ways in which non-human species act together with human actants, by sharing, relating, communicating, inspiring, provoking, and blatantly inciting the other to do something.

Power The concept of power is not specifically mentioned in the conceptualisation so far done of Actor Network Theory. It is however a concept that emerges from Animal Studies, referring 20 directly to the condition of non-human species as “postcolonial”, beyond the grip and control that colonial regimes of thought imposed on them. How can then the notion of Power, present in Animal Studies, be joined with Actor-Network Theory? Latour (1996) explains that the different liaisons between actors, the “netting, lacing, weaving, twisting” of actors ’links, can be compared to what Foucault analyses with his micro-powers theorisation. Foucault (1978, p. 92-94) speaks of the analysis of power as a process that must be done through the detailed description of social interactions, which can then be joined together into wider structures that can produce explanations for the social body. Power is in this way analysed in its sub-structure, “micro-powers”, particularly at institutions, and how it is exercised over individuals during daily life (Foucault, 2003, in Jessop, 2007). Foucault speaks of the way power circulates through networks, which start in the individual and can finish in wider arrays of social institutions and, even more, in the construction of knowledge. Foucault names interactions specifically as power, and calls it a “moving substrate of force relations”, that can “engender states of power”, but “always local and unstable” (Foucault, 1978, p. 93). Power is everywhere, explains the author, and is produced at every moment, at every interaction. There is no set moment where power is exercised in the same way, among the same group or individuals. There is no top down structure for Foucault, no binaries to take into account or that are deemed relevant for the analysis. For Foucault, it is necessary to see the nuances and details of daily life and interactions in families, factories, institutions and the State, as the basis for the characteristics of the “social body” as a whole. These are “a general line of force that traverses the local oppositions and links them together” (Foucault, 1978, p. 94), in a play of interactions, “redistributions, realignments, homogenisations, serial arrangements, and convergences of the force relations”. To speak of power is to speak of the detailed exchanges happening at the basis of interactions, which in turn influence the entirety of society. As described in the previous paragraph, both Foucault and Latour are interested in the detailed descriptions of how interactions happen, between individuals (Foucault) or actors (Latour), and whether these configurations lead to wider explanations about society. Both authors are concerned with the construction of meaning and the interactions between actors. Power is more a verb than a noun, in the same way that agency is more agenting (Despret, 2013). The basis for the analysis is the description of how the net is and how the actors work, starting from the links between actors and extending all the way through the network. I want to highlight how the concepts of power, landscape and agency are all called verbs, and not nouns, by three different authors (Foucault, 2003, in Jessop, 2007; Ingold, 1993; Despret, 2013, respectively). The connection between each concept is about the way they are exercised, how the relations that they create are to be performed and not just named. I would argue that there is a connection between exercising agency, as a way to affect others, power, as the micro- transactions that happen in everyday life and which are based in the agenting of actors, and the way landscapes are formed, for example. In the concept of landscape by Ingold (1993), the taskscape is formed by the activities each actor does, including relations of power and the exercise of agency by affecting others and changing their environment. There is a close link between the three concepts, and in the case of New Spain, these are often weaved together.

A discussion about Actor-Network Theory In the previous sections, I explored the different theoretical frameworks that I studied in order to write this thesis. Multi-species studies, Actor-Network Theory and the concepts of 21

“landscape” and “animal” serve to analyse the diverse relations between cattle and other actors in the network. These theories and concepts were explored for they represented analytical entry points into the relations that exist between non-human animals and other actors. In the end, it is the in-depth description of the relations between actors the base for the creation of a new narrative about the more-than-human process of landscape modification. Nevertheless, there are other ways of analysing changes in landscapes. Authors like Crosby (1972), Melville (1993), Sluyter (1996) and Anderson (2006) have created complex narratives about the processes of landscape modification in different parts of the American continent. Their explanations have made use of archaeological material, archival sources, fieldwork, ethnography, and other methodological tools. Crosby (1972) started the field of environmental history by proposing that the “Columbian Exchange” was a world changing process where species of all sorts were exchanged between Europe and the American continent, creating vast changes in the landscapes. The author focuses, for example, on how pigs adapted to the island of San Juan and modified it in different ways (Crosby, 1972, p. 121-123). Melville (1993), on the other hand, speaks of the environmental changes caused by sheep in the New Spain, by calling their presence a plague. Sluyter (1996) uses archival sources to trace the properties of Spanish settlers and see where each one of these was placed, decade by decade, building a detailed map of the expansion of Spanish settlements and ranches during the XVI and XVII century. Anderson (2006) uses diverse sources, from ethnographic and archaeological material to archival sources, and speaks of the way livestock changed the landscape of New England. Some other authors, like Mann (2014), have created complex accounts of the encounters between Europeans and indigenous people, popularising the history of the American continent by making it available and easily explained to the public. Each one of these authors have contributed with their own research to uncover and theorise the American continent and the modifications that happened since 1492. In a sense, I am standing on their shoulders, because without their research, I would not be able to carry out my own exploration. However, I choose to go in another route because I think, after reading each one of their works, that they have missed a big part of the story. This story includes the animals. Not only mentioning them, but staying with them, developing the argument to include the actions and consequences of the behaviours of non-human animals. Authors like Callon (1984), who I mentioned previously, analyse the relations in which scallops find themselves with science, fishermen, and researchers, delving deeper into a seemingly simple relationship, but instead showing the turns and twists that such a relationship can have. Some others, like Birke, Holmberg, and Thompson (2013) use Actor-Network Theory to trace the interactions between pets, transportation means, and passports, tracing the filaments that join these three entities and which create a network where diseases, movements, and identities are traced, which at the same time construct meanings on what animals and humans are. Others, like Petri and Howell (2020) use Actor-Network Theory to analyse the way that the songs sung by canaries have been influenced by diverse sets of interactions between the canaries, other species of birds, and their trainers, where what a “canary song” is thought of, is in fact not exclusively from canaries, but is the product of the influence of other species of birds on canaries themselves. The network of interactions between non-human species is extended to include other birds, as well as the methods used to train them. Each one of the previously mentioned articles are inspiration and proof of the wide range of subjects that can be touched upon with Actor-Network Theory. The turn in their analysis is how, once again, seemingly unrelated elements are in fact key threads of the fabric of life. The narrative takes a twist and becomes multidimensional. Each one of these examples represent the complexity, the depth and creative power that I, as a researcher, can imbue into my case

22 study, filling my analysis with connections, descriptions, and explanations, “staying with the trouble”, and taking the challenge of explaining reality as it is. After my theoretical exploration, I will, in the next chapter, explore the methods that I used in order to find information about cattle, sort through archival sources, and also the ways in which I organised and coded the information.

Methodology

Cattle left the biggest impressions of their presence in the American continent in two main settings: the landscapes, and in the presence of their descendants in the land even 500 years after their arrival. Although both are connected, as I discussed in the Introduction to this thesis, the presence of cattle in the landscape can also be found in the registry that their human counterparts left. If I want to trace cattle, as I set myself out to do, I would need any source that can bring forth descriptions of their presence. I am, in that sense, looking for traces of cattle in documents, letters, maps, and any other material. Where these traces are to be found is in the digitalised documents of the Archivo General de Indias, where hundreds of thousands of documents, maps, drawings, and other relevant material of the Spanish administration are kept. The Spanish Empire kept a close detail of their activities across the globe. The Archivo General de Indias contains a wide range of documents: from orders and letters to viceroys, judges and officials, to requests by indigenous people to the Kings demanding for rights, as well as maps, descriptions of species, wills, land divisions, general mandates by King, as well as art, paintings, shields of arms, etcetera. Given the wide range of documents on it, the digitalised Archivo General de Indias presented many advantages to my research, allowing me to see the breadth of documents in an efficient and organised way. Furthermore, the documents can be read from anywhere in their digital form, and their content conveniently analysed and coded. The information, however, is fragmentary. The voices of other actors and their thoughts on cattle, such as the indigenous people, are barely present: their voice can only be faintly heard through the documents, written by scribes paraphrasing their demands or describing what is being said. There is, in this sense, a bias. The Archivo General de Indias is almost exclusively composed of official documents written by officials of the Spanish Empire, as well as officials of the Catholic Church, i.e. bishops and priests. Any traces of cattle found in the documents are representations, written and graphic, of the human actors who interacted with them and who saw them from their own point of view. This brings advantages and disadvantages. It is an advantage, for it allows to delve deeper into what humans thought, their activities and ideas. However, there are few direct descriptions of cattle’s activities beyond the ideas of humans, which is a disadvantage because the purpose of this thesis is to put cattle in the center of the narrative, to look at their actions as they are. There are no descriptions of individual cows or bulls, for instance, or calves and their individual actions. Cattle is described in general terms, in bulk. Their traces in the archive, and their actions, are those of a group. This disadvantage can be surpassed with the methodological proposal of Bull et al. (2018). The authors propose to create‘ lively cartographies’, where cattle’s traces can be followed throughout documents, interviews, and other sources of data, creating new images that can better explain the presence of non-human species in diverse landscapes. Lönngren (2018), for example, uses ‘lively cartographies ’in order to trace animals throughout literature. The non- human animals are just as they are: there is no hidden meaning that is to be found, or any metaphor that can clarify and give a deeper understanding of human nature. The non-human is in the surface of the text, the very outer layer, and it is there where it can be traced. It is not 24 about giving voice to the non-human animal or trying to elucidate why they acted in a certain way, their intentions, or if there is a conscience: it is about the exploration and use of “the tension between the metaphorical and the material levels in animal literary representations” (Lönngren, 2018, p. 241). Any sort of human exceptionalism is put into question, for it is no longer about non-human species as mediums in order to know better human experience, but about everything else that has not been said. It is, in summary, about the “nonlinear, affective, irregular, rhizomatic journey when following the animal through the text” (Lönngren, 2018, p. 242). For the purposes of this thesis, this means that the hermeneutic process of searching the archive is that of observation and reflection on the contents of the documents, connecting them to existing literature about cattle’s presence in the landscape, with other actors who dwelled in the landscape, and with other characteristics of the landscape. It is, in this sense, a shared story, a multi-species narrative. The landscape, and its dwellers, are the starting points to trace the network. Before dwelling into the theoretical implications of doing archival research, it is worth looking into the organisation of the Archive and how I roamed inside its digital halls. The process will shed light on why a digital archive is so useful, and how the previously explained advantages worked out in favour of tracing cattle.

The Archive and the Search As I explained in the previous section, any information about the Spanish colonies still available is probably going to be found in the Archivo General de Indias. The archive is where all of the documents, if not most, about the colonial domination of Spain over the American continent are kept. Most Spanish colonial institutions kept records of the activities done throughout the Spanish ultramarine territories (Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte, 2020) and copies were kept and centralised in the archive. These included the Council of the Indies (Consejo de Indias), the Secretaries of the Administration (Secretarías de Despacho), the House of Trade (Casa de la Contratación), and the Consulates of Sevilla and Cádiz (Consulados de Sevilla y Cádiz). The archive is nevertheless not restricted to documents from these institutions in the American continent, for some documents relate to Spanish colonies in Asia, and other documents are not categorised in any of the above-mentioned institutions or continents. The Archivo General de Indias or AGI, as it is known today, started in 1785 by the wishes of the King Carlos III, and it is located in the Casa Lonja de Sevilla. The 8 kilometres of shelves and about 8 million pages make this a large and complete compilation of the Spanish endeavours all over the globe. If cattle are to be traced, then the Archivo General de Indias is indeed the place to locate them. I have briefly mentioned that I used the digital section of the archive. The use of the digital archive had consequences in my research process. On the one hand, travel was deemed unnecessary reducing any sorts of risks or uncertainties2 when searching and handling the documents. The financial costs were thus very greatly reduced, and bureaucratic impediments were few. Even more, as Lorimer (2010) puts it, the digital archive allowed me to skip the sometimes inconvenient interaction with different institutional cultures, in which the timing

2 Especially during a pandemic. 25 of my own research and access to the archive are determined by the archive’s location and the archivists themselves. Digitally, one can access the archive anywhere, and the analysis and management of the information are open to the researcher. There is, moreover, no risk of damaging the originals, as digital copies are used. The digital archive also provides a way to break “methodological orthodoxy” and elitist practices of archival research, where the labor and techniques to work with archives are not part of an exclusive, elite group, but can in fact be done by anybody (Lorimer, 2010). In my case, for example, by allowing me to search and use the information in the archive without the need for specific training in the management of documents, while at the same time permitting me to do research without the need of travel, funding, or visas. Moreover, the metadata from archivists can still be found in digital archives. This metadata was useful when searching for traces cattle. The previous work of archivists, organising and connecting the files with different sections inside the Archivo General de Indias, allowed me to find more documents in more sections that I had not previously included. A digital archive, in summary, is more democratic, open to be searched, looked through, and used by anyone with a connection to the Internet and a screen. To trace cattle, I used keywords that could put me closer to the documents that could be relevant. I did not know yet which could be interesting or not, but the results thrown by the archive search box could point me in the right direction. In that sense, a first part of the research focused on finding words that matched or resembled meanings associated with cattle and related activities, such as herding, ranching, grazing, among others, in Spanish. With this in mind, I wrote a list of words that was put to the test in the Archivo General de Indias (Table 1).

Table 1. Keywords used in the Archivo General de Indias.

Search parameter in Spanish Translation to English Number of results Vacas Cows 120 Bueyes Oxen 11 Ganado vacuno Cattle 13 Reses Farm animal (cow, sheep, 2 goat) but in several places of Latin America and Spain, it is synonymous of cow

Novillas Heifer 0 Novillo Calf 1 Terneras Heifer 0 Ternero Calf 18 Terneros Calves 0 Vaquería Cowshed, cattle farm, or the 1 activity related to working with cattle

Table 1. Keywords used in the Archivo General de Indias.

Vaquero Cowboy 14 Hato Ranch where cows are kept 15 Vaca lechera Dairy cow 0 Hacienda Farm, ranch, estate 5565 Ganadero Rancher, cattle breeder 1 Cabezas de ganado Cattle heads 5 Civilizar Civilize 0 Toros Bulls 50 Cíbolos Mythical cows that were 1 said to be found in the American continent

Another important aspect of this search was to define a specific chronological timeframe to limit the number of results. I was primarily interested in the first decades of encounters in the American continent. However, at a first glance, it was not sure that I would even find any documents of these decades. My search started thus being broad, from 1492 to 1800. Any document, map, or letter that matched any of the keywords in Table 1 would be included in a first round of results. Nevertheless, there were many documents that were not relevant. Several files were about inheritances and conflicts between Spanish individuals over cattle, as well as the counting of cattle heads after heads of family or Spanish officials passed away. Such results were discarded, as they did not relate specifically to encounters between cattle and other actors in the continent. The one piece of information that these documents did reveal was that there was an idea of cattle as property, and this subject has already been extensively discussed (Velten, 2007; Wallerstein, 2011). The Archivo General de Indias webpage, and its advanced search feature, were very useful in narrowing down results and specifying the possible documents that I was interested in. There were 7 sections, each of which were set to follow certain rules. In that sense, I set each of the text boxes as follows:

1. Buscar por palabras/Search by words 1.1. Con todas las palabras/With all the following words: [here I inserted the keywords] 2. Filtrar por Índices de Descripción/Filter by Descriptive Indexes: 2.1. Categorías/Categories: Todas/All. 3. Búsqueda Documentos/Search documents: Empty. 3.1. Búsqueda Aproximada/Approximate search: Yes. 3.2. Búsqueda exacta/Exact search: No.

4. Filtrar por Archivo/Filter by Archive 4.1. Archivos/Archives: Archivo General de Indias. 5. Filtrar por Fecha 5.1. Fechas/Dates: desde/from 01/01/1492 hasta/till 31/12/1800 6. Filtrar por Tipo de Soporte/Filter by type of supporting material 6.1. Tipo de Soporte/Type of supporting material: Todos/All. 7. Digitalización/Digitalization 7.1. Todos/All: No. 7.2. Digitalizados/Digitalized: Yes. 7.3. No Digitalizados/Not digitalized: No. 8. Filtrar por Signatura/Filter by Signature 8.1. Signatura/Signature: Empty. 8.2. Signatura incompleta/Incomplete signature: Yes. 8.3. Signatura complete/Complete signature: No. However, the list of search parameters was not stable, and it grew as I included new possible words that could lead to files on cattle. The word “cíbolos”, is one example: it is the name given by the Spanish to a mythical cow that, according to some reports, was seen in the north of Mexico and which were part of the Cíbola civilisation of indigenous people. The word was added as it could be a way of naming cattle. In certain records, there is evidence of explorers commanded to look for these mythical animals. Although it proved to be unfruitful, it still represented an opportunity. In another case, a keyword like “hacienda” was instead not included in the search, because it brought up too many results (5.565 hits in the digitalised files), which were impossible to process within the time frame of the current thesis. After the initial searches and selection, I sorted search results by “Signatura”, as the archivists have called it. A “Signatura”, translated as Signature, is a series of words and numbers that identify to what section of the archive a document belongs to, which in many cases correspond to geographical locations. In this way, I initially thought, it could be faster to analyse the archives and sort them out. However, the process was not straightforward. I added therefore another filter to the search, namely, the date in which the documents were issued. Geographical and chronological order would allow me to organise the information in an understandable and efficient manner. After having used my own keywords and organised the information, I found a key element in the search that helped me to find even more relevant material. The archivists in charge of the Spanish Archives System had created two separate tags, “Ganado” (Cattle) and “Ganadería” (Cattle ranching), listing all documents that had to do with these two keywords in one webpage. Clicking on each one of these redirected me to the sites with metadata and documents related to these subjects. Finding these two tags proved to be very useful, for it allowed me to use the previous work of the archivists and sort through documents that I might have otherwise missed. The search was then broader, drawing from my own work and search and the work of the archivists of the Archivo General de Indias. So far, I had not selected any documents to work with. I was scouting the archive and listing any file that could be useful to tracing cattle. The combination of my keywords and the tags 28 in the Archivo General de Indias made sure that I had more chances of finding those relevant documents, which resulted in a large number of files. To summarise, the descriptive tag “Ganado” contained 179 results, and “Ganadería” some 64 files. These results, combined with the ones found through keywords, amounted to 495 documents. The challenge lied now in what documents to select, and under which selection criteria.

Selection of documents 492 documents are a vast sample of documents to analyse. Organisation and rigorous selection criteria are key in order to systematically sort through the information. As previously explained, my research questions focused on issues regarding the modification of the landscape by cattle and the networks formed by cattle and other species. These two elements were the basis to start the process of tracing the network, making sure that they were not rigid, allowing the links to extend when new explanations, meanings and connections happened. To select the documents that could be more relevant, the metadata written by the archivists of the Archivo General de Indias, “Reach and contents” (“Alcance y contenido”) was used to sort through them efficiently. On these paragraphs, the archivists summarised the document in question. This summary was then used to know what the document was about, being attentive to any mention of the presence, activities, behaviour, or ideas surrounding cattle and that could answer my research questions. The criteria that I used to choose what documents were relevant were based on previous readings about cattle (Velten, 2007; Sluyter, 1996) as well as on my own experience in sorting through a vast amount of documents in the archive itself. After selecting what documents could be relevant, I organised the information for easier and effective management, as will be explained in the next section.

Organisation of the information Out of 492 documents, I found 58 to be possibly relevant to my research objectives. The dates of these documents ranged from 1501 – 1786, meaning roughly the entirety of the time that Spain had colonies in the American continent. To have easy, secure and reliable access to each one of these documents, I used a software tool that could handle large amounts of data, called DEVONthink. Using this program, I consolidated the information, separating each document in a folder with the following information: 1. Date and title of the document. 2. An RTF file with the contents of the “Reach and contents” (“Alcance y contenido“) section of the Archivo General de Indias. 3. A link to the respective item on the webpage of the Archivo General de Indias, embedded in the metadata of the folder. Organising the information in this way allowed for a fast search of relevant terms, as well as linking relevant files depending on where they were located in the Archive, the date of issue, who the possible author was, among other tags that contextualised the document. To create a searchable database, I created an index with all the selected documents, one that could give a view of the organization of the Archivo General de Indias, with its sub-sections, and a link inside each of these that directed to the file in question. In this way, I could look at the files in relation to one another. A complete list of the 58 selected documents, alongside the places

29 where they were located in the Archivo General de Indias, can be found in the Appendices section, under “First selection of documents”.

A second selection After the Index was finished, I re-read the“ Reach and contents” (“Alcance y contenido”) metadata that the archivists wrote for each entry. This section allowed to see thematic connections between the files. Upon inspection, several documents showed to be connected by the theme that they were treating a particular conflict between indigenous communities and Spanish officials. The subject of these conflicts was often cattle, and how these species (alongside pigs, chickens, donkeys and mules) were destroying the sementeras (cultivated land) of indigenous people. Most of these documents were from the Real Audiencia de Nueva España, which nowadays corresponds to Mexico. Some documents also corresponded to the Island of San Juan (nowadays, Puerto Rico) and Perú. The documents spanned the period between 1528 – 1607, most of them being judicial processes. After 1607, however, there are no more documents about the conflicts between indigenous people and Spanish officials on the subject of cattle. In addition, they were not located in the Viceroyalty of New Spain. It is therefore not clear if the conflicts stopped and therefore not reported, or if they were simply reported elsewhere. Other documents were not about these conflicts and were not located in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, thus not being part of a set of documents that could be compared and analysed together. I found the proximity of the documents to be important, if I wanted to do a localised and detailed history of landscape modifications by cattle. Disparate items, spread in a large time frame and in a large area, would not be useful to accomplish my objective. Furthermore, I was interested in the first decades of the encounter between Europe and the American continent, so any documents from the XVI and XVII century had, a priori, importance in my search. The fact that these conflicts between cattle and indigenous people were not mentioned later on makes these documents a rare glimpse into human-animal encounters, social negotiations and the network of links and associations in the American continent in the first century of colonisation. The full information of the documents that were organised in this section, as well as their location in the Archive, can be found in the Appendices section “Second selection of documents”. The reduction in the amount of files to be checked allowed for an in-depth revision of what documents were about, which allowed me to see connections between them that were not apparent in the Reach and Content section. The challenge now lied on understanding the contents of each document.

A third selection and transcription Selecting the documents, as previously explained, was the first part in the process. When faced with the transcription of them into Spanish, and their posterior translation, the documents were further narrowed down. There were several reasons that justify the shortening of the list of documents. On the one hand, each one of these texts were handwritten, so I had to transcribe them in order to understand what was in them. The texts contained old Spanish words, spelling and grammar, as well as particular expressions that were only used in the administrative language of the XV and XVI centuries. The texts were moreover written to be understood only by those that were supposed to read it, i.e. officials of the Spanish Crown. This implies that the texts were not 30 meant to be preserved nor showcased to a wider audience, but had a functional purpose: they were orders to be communicated efficiently throughout a vast Empire, that were meant to be read by the King, his officials, and nobody else. Transcription was then even more of a challenge, despite my native Spanish proficiency. To transcribe the documents to modern Spanish writing, it was necessary for it to be understood by me and by a word processing software, in an almost transgressing way. The documents were brought back from the depths of the archive and put in the spotlight. Documents that were not supposed to be read are now being read, coded and analysed, and even more, translated to English. It is in this way that I did a tacit third selection of documents. Of all the files that could have contained relevant information, only those that I could transcribe were effectively coded and analysed. In other words, of the original 58 documents that were relevant to my search, 12 could be transcribed. In this sense, the transcription process was a part of the methodological process that defined the scope of the research. Some authors have pointed out the important place that transcription has in archival research, especially when dealing with handwritten letters and documents. Community transcription has become one of the ways in which volunteers, researchers and local communities have engaged in processing handwritten documents, allowing archivists to manage larger amounts of data in less time (Daniels et al., 2014). In some cases, even machine assisted transcription is used, which presents the advantage not only of saving time, but of training a particular algorithm to understand a specific handwriting. Successful cases have been done using this method, which combined with the experience of archivists and historians, have made transcription processes easier (Thorvaldsen et al., 2015). Both these methods can in fact be used, by training machine learning algorithms with the data produced by human transcribers, and making the process a mixture of community produced transcriptions and assisted machine learning transcriptions (Firmani et al., 2018). In all cases, the transcription methods unearth information that was not meant to be found, read, or publicised, while at the same time making it available and easy to use by researchers and public alike. In my case, the transcription process was supported by a software tool called Transkribus, hosted by the Digitisation and Digital Preservation group (DEA) at the University of Innsbruck, and funded by the European Commission as part of the H2020 Project READ (2016-2019)3. With the information written and transcribed to a word processing software, I was able to use coding analytical tools to see what themes were being mentioned, how they were mentioned, and what descriptions, networks and other links I could find between cattle and other dwellers in the landscape.

Coding In order to analyse textual information, there are a variety of methods to choose from. I chose to code the information, for the many advantages that it brings with it. I was looking for descriptions, links, and any sort of idea that was present in these documents, so assigning codes and labels to the information was key. On the one hand, I could process large amounts of qualitative data, categorising and sorting it depending on what is written or meant on the

3 This software simplifies the organisation and transcription of handwritten files. With enough data, the transcribed information could even be used to create Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) models, which can be potentially used to transcribe other similar documents (READ-COOP, 2019). Such ways of handling and transcribing data present exciting opportunities for the future of archival research, saving time and allowing for more historians to access previously unaccessible accounts. 31 text. It allowed me to trace how thoughts and ideas come up in the documents and on what context they are written. I was then able to group them and follow them throughout each document, creating bridges and annotations between each one of these. In turn, the aggregation of these codes allows to see wider trends and ideas, which can as well be analysed further and connected with the context of each document (Hannam, 2001; Skjott Linneberg and Korsgaard, 2019). I coded the documents in two ways. First, I descriptively assigned codes to each document. These codes were extensive and constant, allowing for each part of the document to be sorted in one particular descriptive code. Afterwards, these descriptive codes were aggregated in wider categories, which helped to summarise the contents of these descriptions. Finally, I joined these categories by themes, discovering the general thoughts and views in the documents. It is important to note that in this process, some ideas were found immediately and did not require any more search: for instance, the idea that expresses that “nature is vast and we all fit in the land”, which will be analysed in later sections of this thesis, was literally laid out by the then King of Spain. Other ideas were not so easy to find and were instead found through the aggregation and analysis of descriptive codes. The codes can be found in Table II. Descriptive codes and Table III. Analytical codes, in the Appendices section. Throughout this process, I also wrote analytical memos. These were impressions, feelings and general comments I had of the information I was reading, transcribing and coding. I took this idea from Skjott Linneberg and Korsgaard (2019). These analytical memos became relevant tools to remember what ideas and intuitions I had while working on the documents. To summarise, the searching, narrowing down, transcription and coding of the documents found in the Archivo General de Indias amounted to a total of 12 documents. Although less than the original 492 search results, these 12 documents counted with information critical to understanding the modification of the landscape by a non-human actor, the cow. These 12 documents were all part of the Royal Court of New Spain (Real Audiencia de México), and included descriptions of conflicts between indigenous people, cattle and Spanish settlers all over the region. These documents showed that the presence of cattle was so significant and disrupting, that their actions were registered and reported back to the King of Spain and his Council of the Indies. But, paradoxically, the presence and actions of cattle were so common that it is only in this period of time, in the end of the XVI century and beginning of the XVII century, that cattle are mentioned. Other than that, there are no more mentions of cattle, despite their constant presence and actions all over the region, as I will show in the last chapter of this thesis. In summary, cattle caused so much impact that their presence is registered in official written documents, but at the same time their presence was so familiar that they are only mentioned in a period of 50 years. The previous section on theoretical sources can be complemented with the methodological advantages of archival sources. Although I separate theory and method, they are together the base of my analysis. Actor-Network Theory and Multi-species studies can be done by analysing archival sources such as the ones I found, where the relations between non-human animals and other species can be traced and delineated. It is through these sources that I describe the network, and in that sense I set the stage for contrasting concepts like animal and landscape with my own empirical material. The empirical material is also good to do ethography, as it reveals the perceptions of several actors surrounding the presence of cattle in the continent. The material, as I will show in the upcoming chapters, reveals aspects of the ethea of cattle that sometimes contrasted with the ways of life of other species. This is how ‘lively cartographies’ come about (Bull et al., 2018), by using Lönngren (2018) and her approach of reading the presence of animal species 32 throughout the documents, seeing them as they are and not projecting human feelings and perceptions into the actions of the animal. In the upcoming chapters, I will proceed to delineate analytical elements on the influence of cattle in their new environment, the American continent. Through the documents, I will explain how cattle related to other non-human species, the way that indigenous and Spanish settlers interacted and constructed meaning around these changes, and I will also complement the empirical material with other sources that can give a wider understanding of the impact cattle had in the region of New Spain. It is, in this sense, a snapshot of the actors and their links in the landscape of New Spain.

An ecology of change: the Indigenous and Spanish Actor- Network

In order to know how cattle modified the landscape, it is important to have a point of comparison, a snapshot of how the landscape was before cattle and other species arrived in the continent. The documents found in the Archivo General de Indias contained, in this sense, descriptions of the activities that indigenous people did, as well as how cattle and other species disrupted these tasks. In the current chapter, I will explore these descriptions and trace, through the documents, how the landscape was and what it meant to “dwell” on it for the indigenous people of the region. This network of interactions and meanings will be put in comparison with the way that cattle disrupted the network. I will focus on these changes in the second part of the chapter, where I will talk about how the network could have been in Spain, extending the links between actors all the way to the Iberian Peninsula and analysing what meanings were constructed through these interactions. In other words, I will inquire about the ecological networks that were formed between cattle and other species, and the consequences that these interactions would have in the landscape of the New Spain.

The New Spain before cattle: activities and actors Each one of the 12 documents found in the Archivo General de Indias provide clues about how the New Spain looked like, what activities were done and how these were performed by indigenous people. One of the analysed documents4 provides a summary of these activities, and moreover, how cattle disrupted them. This Real Cédula describes, in detail, both the context and the damages that cattle and other species were causing to indigenous people. The text reads as follows: For about 10 years to now the carriages and wagons of mules and oxen have increased for the purpose of taking clothes pipes and other merchandises that come in the ships from the city of Veracruz to the [city] of Mexico and other parts that have to pass by that province in such a degree that it is more than 20 thousand oxen without counting the mules that are many more and without the harriae5 and all the mentioned oxen and mules do many damages to the cultivated lands and houses of the natives and they eat the plants tunas magueis mayzales and other legumes that for being their main crop it is the occasion that they are unpopulated and that they leave their houses and haciendas. The description explains that carriages and wagons were causing damages to indigenous people’s houses and crops, due to the increased numbers of these that were passing between Veracruz and the City of Mexico. It is mentioned that species such as mules and oxen “eat the plants” that the indigenous people are cultivating, among these, “tunas, magueis mayzales and

4 1585-04-16, Poblet. Real cédula a al virrey de Nueva España y la Audiencia de México para que vean las ordenanzas que han de hacer los indios principales de la provincia de Tlaxcala, con el fin de que sus sementeras y granjerías no reciban daño de los bueyes y mulas de las carretas que pasan por ellas. 5 I could not transcribe and translate this word to English, so it is written as it was in the document. 34 other legumes”. The mention of these plants could mean that the main activity was in fact the cultivation of species like tunas (probably referring to Opuntia ficus-indica), magueis (Agave americana), mayzales (Zea mays) and other legumes. If it was, as it seems, one of the main tasks performed by indigenous people, then the passing of wagons would have been a severely disrupting phenomenon. So strong, the document states, that some indigenous people were moving from the area and abandoning the territory. The document, dated 1585, indicates that cultivation was an important activity. Cultivation was, nevertheless, key to the life of indigenous people even before the date. Some other sources complement this observation by pointing out that maize, for example, was in fact a key part of the history of indigenous people in the area, used not only for food, but also for beverages, rituals, and for the joint work of the communities (Mann, 2014). In the description, the main issue described is the damage done by non-human species. It is explicitly mentioned that oxen and mules “eat the plants”, which combined with the amount of them and the passing of carriages, completed a variety of ways that all affected cultivation. Furthermore, looking at who wrote the documents and why they were written, I could find more clues of how this region was, offering a glimpse into the connections formed by the end of the XVI century in the New Spain. On the one hand, four individuals are mentioned as those who describe the situation: Pedro de Torres, Diego Téllez and Zacarías de Santiago, and their interpreter Diego Muñoz Camargo. They write or talk to the King6 in order to let him know that, for about 10 years (assuming these are Gregorian calendar years, this would mean between 1574 and 1585) oxen and mules have been constantly passing by their land, severely affecting their life. They were the indigenous caciques, military, social and religious leaders of the province of Tlaxcala. Their mention reveals some connections between human actors and how these were being shaped by the presence of cattle. In addition, authors like Haskett (2008) indicate that the indigenous people of Tlaxcala, who were represented by these caciques, were allied with Hernán Cortés in order to take down the ruling indigenous empire, the Aztecs. The exact numbers of those who they represented are not clear, for sickness and war struck these communities, but it is apparent in these documents that they survived and that they are cohabiting, and even negotiating, with the Spanish human settlers. All of these descriptions and details are relevant for they help to complete the network in the New Spain. The relationship between cattle and indigenous people is shown, in the document, as that of antagonism, whereas the relationship between indigenous people and Spanish human settlers is that of cohabitation and negotiation. At the same time, the document shows that cattle related to local plants and crops by eating them, affecting them and provoking changes in the activities on the landscape. Although the changes are not mentioned in the current document, the introduction of cattle in the landscape did create a new relationship which had not existed in the landscape previously, where cattle consume these plants. One last detail that can help fill the network is the relationships formed due to location. The Province of Tlaxcala, which is the region mentioned in the document, between Ciudad de México and Veracruz, provided a strategic point between the sea, in which Veracruz was located, and the Ciudad de México, capital of the Viceroyalty of the New Spain. Before it was Ciudad de México, this was also the main city of the Aztecs, so the Province of Tlaxcala was in fact very important: for the Spanish to attack the Aztecs in the beginning of their conquest, they had a place to fall back to when their invasion was not going as planned. The indigenous communities of the area provided food, rest, and shelter, as well as fighters for the war (Haskett, 2008). It is after the battles have been won, and the Spanish established as the rulers,

6 How they communicated the situation to the King is not clear. 35 that we find these documents: the aftermath of the conquest of the humans. But now, we witness the conquest of the landscape is not over, and it is instead being done by the non- humans.

Living in a disrupted landscape: indigenous people and non-human animals The relationship between cattle and indigenous people is relevant because it reveals contrasts between the ethea, or ways of life, of Spanish and indigenous humans. When speaking of non- human animals in general, authors like Anderson (2006), in the case of the Chesapeake Bay in the United States, explain that it is possible that indigenous communities had a relationship with animals that had little to do with control. It was, instead, co-habitation. Although different species were in fact domesticated, these were said not to be held or treated as were horses or cows by European humans. Dogs, among indigenous communities, for example, were said to be left free, hunting together with indigenous communities, but not in the same way that Europeans had domesticated dogs (Anderson, 2006, p. 35). Anderson (2006, p. 23-45) argues that indigenous people probably had a more animist way of seeing non-human species, each one of them having a sort of spirit that made them special and invaluable in nature. To hunt a species was not thus an act of control, but an act in which respect was kept, where not any animal could be hunted, and if it was to happen, special rituals needed to be performed. Nevertheless, as I mentioned in the previous chapter, the relationship between cattle and indigenous people is so relevant that they are mentioned in official Spanish documents, but at the same time, the presence of these animals is so commonplace that the mention of cattle stops after these documents. In other words, even though other animals could have also been mentioned, like goats, sheep (Melville, 1994, explores sheep and their impact in the landscape of Northern Mexico), or horses, all of whom were not previously found in the area and who could have also caused conflicts with indigenous people, it is only cattle the ones that are specifically mentioned. Moreover, it seems that indigenous people were communicating constantly with the Spanish Crown, negotiating their existence and trying to diminish the negative influence that cattle was having in their lives. Indigenous people were, however, not successful and instead were displaced from their land. In one document7, the situation is explained as follows: I have been told that in these terms for a long time back by the viceroys there have been given many cavalleriae8 to the Spanish and sitios de estancia9 for cattle and mills and camerae10 with so much excess that they do not have where to grow crops for their subsistence and payment of tributes and they do not pick what they grow by the big abundance that there is in the towns of oxen horses mules and other minor cattle that eat them and destroy them without being able to resist it nor repair it which has caused that many of the mentioned naturals leave the haciendas and [not understandable] go to other towns of encomenderos11 causing great damage to the payments of rents and tributes to the Crown, and by which the current ones can be conserved and lived with

7 1602-05-15, Aranjuez. Real cédula al virrey de Nueva España y la Audiencia de México para que hagan justicia breve y sumariamente sobre lo que piden los indios de la ciudad y provincia de Texcoco de no recibir daño ni agravio en sus sementeras por la abundancia de bueyes, caballos, mulas y otros ganados menores que se las comen y destruyen 8 A unit of measurement of land. 9 A type of land, like a hacienda. 10 I am not sure what this translates to. 11 Men who were in charge of the encomienda, an institution of the Spanish Empire where indigenous people were under the power of a Spanish settler, put to work in the activities that the settler decided. 36

comfortability it has [not understandable] that we make you ask that from now on the Viceroys and people in charge of the government do not give any more cavalleriae of land sitios nor estancias for cattle, mills, kennels nor camerae, not for any other thing of any gender or quality so that no person in the mentioned city and province and their subjects and servants of theirs, and that it is ruled that the mentioned natives do not receive damage nor grievance in the mentioned sementerae12 and that those who do are punished with rigour. The fragment explains how the encomienda, the local institution that the Spanish Crown created in order to manage the indigenous population, was being affected directly by the displacement of indigenous peoples. The main worry of the King, who writes this letter to the viceroy of New Spain, is the diminishing “rents and tributes to the Crown”, affected by the lack of indigenous people in the encomiendas. The fragment, however, reveals the way indigenous people reacted to oxen and other species. They left the land, because “oxen horses mules and other minor cattle...eat them and destroy them without being able to resist it or repair it”. The document complements the previously analysed document, from 1585, confirming that the damage was ongoing and that it was continuously causing indigenous people to move away from their land. More specifically, moving away from wherever cattle and other species were roaming. In this fragment, the King of Spain places the burden of responsibility on the viceroy and other Spanish officials, who were giving away land titles for ranching that were, in turn, causing cattle to roam all over the land. However, when compared to the way Sluyter (1996) explains cattle ranching in the XVI century, ranching was not dependent on where land was placed, but instead depended on where cattle roamed depending on the season. The dates of the documents also reveal diverging meanings in the network. The Spanish King was being affected by the damages caused to indigenous people, because tax revenue was diminishing. However, as it is stated in the documents, his officials in the New Spain were granting lands to Spanish settlers and breeding cattle, mules and horses. There are opposing interests at play: the King seeks to continue having income from tax; and the settlers and officials, looking for lands where they can establish mills, cattle, and kennels. The Spanish settlers in the landscape had thus different interests than the King. In fact, I argue that the King of Spain, despite nominally being called “King”, held a different meaning for the Spanish settlers in the New Spain. Although the King held political significance in his name, the political actions and consequences came mainly from his officials, actants who effectively acted, incited, provoked, took, sold, granted and thrived in the land of the American continent for their own benefits. These differences in how actors operated are key to understand the intricacies of meaning in networks, where actors can sometimes be allies, but they can also sometimes be in opposite sides. Nominally, as is the case with the King and his subjects, they could be allies, but de facto, they are against each other. New meanings are being constructed and redistributed, and the consequences are seen directly on the landscape. My analysis of the network shows that the arrival of cattle in the American context created a situation where Spanish settlers, cattle, and other European livestock, were in a position of power in relation to indigenous people and the local species of non-human animals and plants. In this particular case, cattle prevailed over the actors from the American continent, provoking in some cases the displacement of indigenous people to other parts of the territory, diminishing drastically their ability to provoke or affect others in the network. Following their

12 Cultivated land. 37 displacement, the growth of local crops would have also diminished, and Spanish humans were incited to create more villages, ranches and roads in the landscape. Moving away from the way that cattle interacted with indigenous people, I would like to delve now into how cattle interacted with Spanish settlers. The relationship, as I will explore in the upcoming sections, was instead about dominion over the species, where the human actor reigns on top of the non-human animal. The consequences of these ideas would reverberate in the network, modifying the links between non-human animals of the New Spain and even more, of the American continent.

Spanish settlers and non-human animals The relationship between cattle and the Spanish human settlers, as previously mentioned, was pervaded by the idea of dominion. This idea, as will be explored in this section, had concrete consequences in the network and can be understood better by analysing how Spanish humans interacted with non-human animals. One of the ways in which the interaction between Spanish humans and cattle can be explored is by analysing how cattle were brought into the American continent. During the XV and XVI centuries, the Spanish and Portuguese placed cattle, pigs and other species in islands in the Atlantic, where they could serve as food supplies during long sea voyages. The voyage to the American continent had use for this strategy, but it was not the first one. Armstrong (2002), citing Lewinsohn (1954), explains how the Spanish and the Portuguese had several islands like these all along the Atlantic. In the case of the English, Anderson (2006) cites different sources that explain this situation on Sable Island, where cattle was left in order to feed the different exploratory expeditions around the area. Crosby (1972) also registers several instances of this situation in the journeys from Europe to other parts of the globe. The practice would allow Spanish settlers to move from Europe to the American continent securing supplies along the way. Cattle, and other non-human animals, were in this case resources to be transported and strategically placed in order to feed the human explorers. The practice was, however, part of a long standing strategy to colonise territories. Lewinsohn (1954) explains that the journeys of the XV century had specific steps to be followed: the navigators would first find the land; then “useful plants and animals had to be taken there” (p. 128); and finally, after the food supply was established, the settlement of the place could begin. Non-human animals, in this case cattle, were thus a key part in the colonising strategy of the Spanish settlers, and were brought into the American continent as part of this thought. The process had consequences in the interactions between non-human species on the American continent. If the previously mentioned strategy of bringing cattle into the territory happened before the Spanish settlers came to New Spain, this means that cattle had been roaming the landscape even before any settlement was built. Furthermore, cattle could have probably been eating the crops of indigenous people even before the Spanish settlers came. Cattle were eating maize, tunas, and magueis, and probably other species of plants, affecting the livelihood of indigenous people, perhaps since the end of the XV century. The previous analysis can explain, for example, how cattle behaved and moved around the New Spain. There were reports of large herds of cattle in the plains of Texas (then New Spain) and even of feral cattle (Velten, 2006). There are, however, other elements to the relationship that Spanish human settlers had with cattle. The first one had to do with their view of cattle as wealth; and the second one, with

38 their position as beings in the Spanish Catholic cosmogony. These two elements will be explored in the upcoming sections, as well as the way they related to the network.

Cattle, value, and landscape modification The connection between cattle and wealth was pointed out by Marx et al. (1969), signalling its linguistic origins in the Latin root Pecus, (which signified both wealth and a head of cattle) as well as the connection between Pecus (head of cattle in Latin) and the English word “pecuniary”, meaning money or wealth. The connection, however, was more than linguistic: Marx pointed at the connection to highlight how capital moves. Capital is not a fixed thing that can be traced directly, but that fluctuates and expands. Such characteristics are similar to those that cattle itself have, as livestock, as value and wealth that moves. As Bobrow-Strain (2009) would call them, they are“ value on the hoof”. The idea that cattle were property was present in the way Spanish human settlers thought of them during the XVI century. Wallerstein (2011) explains how land was taken, in colonial settings, to have more space for cattle. In the case of the New Spain, in the XVI century, this was probably correct: Sluyter (1996, 1998) attributes the expansion of Spanish property rights in the New Spain to their desire to have more cattle in the area. The consequences, in the network, would be that land would be taken from indigenous people in order to have more cattle. This explanation, however, is not complete without complementing it with the previous section. In other words, the consequences for those who dwelled in the New Spain were twofold: on the one hand, cattle was interacting by eating the plants, affecting the main crop of indigenous people; on the other hand, the human settlers were taking the land of the indigenous people. The Spanish idea of cattle as property would have, as seen in this section, severe consequences in how the landscape would look: from being a land with crops, to a land where cattle and haciendas reign13. The view of cattle as property can also be complemented by how Spanish settlers perceived cattle and their position in the universe. In the documents that I analysed, the figure of God is mentioned as the one giving legitimacy to the writing and to the King himself, hinting at the important place that religion had in the Spain of XVI and XVII century. These religious views could have also been influencing the way non-human animals were seen and treated, revealing more aspects of the position of cattle in the network and the meanings that were constructed about them. In the upcoming section, I will explore how religious beliefs such as Catholicism influenced the way Spanish humans perceived non-human animals, and how these views can complement my analysis of the network in the New Spain.

Cattle and Catholicism In the Spanish cosmogony of the XVI century, Catholicism was the main guide to understand the world. Their view on the world and all beings was present, also, in how they viewed cattle. The Catholic tradition establishes that humans were given dominion over non-human animals during creation, becoming their stewards and caretakers (“Fauna, Biblical,” n.d.). This view on non-human animals influenced the way Spanish settlers saw non-human animals’ rights and actions. As The Catholic Encyclopaedia establishes:

13 This idea will be further developed in the next chapters. 39

Only a person, that is, a being possessed of reason and self-control, can be the subject of rights and duties; or, to express the same idea in terms more familiar to adherents of other schools of thought, only beings who are ends in themselves, and may not be treated as mere means to the perfection of other beings, can possess rights (Fox, 1908). The quote showcases how cattle and other non-human animals were thought of by the Spanish. They do not possess reason, and thus they cannot have rights or duties. They are “mere means to the perfection of other beings”, the latter being humans, and thus cannot possess any rights. They do not possess reason or self-control, so they cannot have right nor duties, for they are unable to fulfil them. This view over cattle has a theological background, one in which human beings used to be closer to non-human animals. Before humans were expelled from the Garden of Eden, humans and non-human animals lived together peacefully, recognising each other’s existence and living with respect for each other. In Catholic tradition, human beings did not eat meat before the fall, and could live only with the fruits and plants found in the Garden of Eden (“Fauna, Biblical,” n.d.). After the fall, however, animals went away and hid from human beings, and the latter started consuming animal meat. Animals, as the Bible names them, did not fall in sin, it was humans. The view on the innocence of animals is present, even nowadays, in how Catholic practitioners see and interact with non-human species. The view also influenced how Spanish settlers saw cattle in the New Spain, as a species that was not responsible for its actions. The human, in contrast, was the one responsible for their actions, which can explain why in the documents it is the responsibility of the Spanish humans to solve the situation. So far, I have explained how the landscape of the New Spain was before 1492, how indigenous people related to their landscape and how the Spanish settlers did too. I have also explained the relationship that the Spanish settlers had with cattle, in contrast to the relationship that indigenous people had with non-human species. After the groundwork has been set, it is worth looking into the interactions of the three actors, i.e. indigenous people, cattle, and the Spanish settlers, and see how they form a particular network. I set out now to continue creating the detailed explanations required by Actor-Network Theory, to talk about meanings and actors; by landscape theory, to talk about dwelling; and by Animal Studies, to create localised stories of the influence of non-human animals in the landscape.

Expanding the network: explanations and incitations As I have explained, the meaning of non-human species for the Spanish settlers diverged from the ones that indigenous people had. The relation between cattle and other actors, in comparison with indigenous people, also diverged. On the one hand, oxen relate to the land by eating grass, whereas indigenous people thrive and grow with their crops. Moreover, cattle are heavy and gradually make the earth more compact and flat, destroying the habitat for seeds and crops that could otherwise be grown. Carriages and wagons are also part of the network. These represent technologies that are used in order to transport merchandises. The merchandises mentioned in the fragment at the beginning of the text are clothes and pipes14. Clothes to dress the Spanish, we assume, that live in Ciudad de México, representing the cultural, social and economic status of those who live there, and pipes for smoking, a luxury for those who lived in these urban centres. It is in this context, in the interactions between

14 In Spanish, “ropa” and “pipas”. 40 these actants, that cattle find themselves being the transporters, or the force behind the ideas that Spanish settlers had about land, food and culture. On the other hand, carriages and wagons can signify the existence of working conditions and ideas regarding the place of non-human animals in this network. The work of carrying, holding, and pushing, is for non-human animals. Such a relation with non-human animals reminds of the discussion by Hribal (2007), who describes cattle, horses and other non-human species as beings in particular working conditions, who interact and negotiate their conditions of living, acting and deciding how they live, where they live and what they consume. Their active participation in human activities as workers, as exploited, as negotiators, has effectively influenced and, in fact, ensued social change. Such was the relation between cattle and Spanish settlers. The previously cited fragments also speak of how oxen and mules enter indigenous peoples ’ houses and destroy them. Perhaps the materials of which these houses were made of could have incited them to come into them and eat them. Perhaps the location of their houses, close to the crops, put them on the way of oxen and mules looking for food. Or perhaps, their houses were on the way of the locations in which the Spanish settlers wanted to have roads, so that Veracruz and Ciudad de México could be connected. Maybe it was a combination of the above options. In any case, the document reveals how cattle related to plants and housing, deeply modifying what a house and a crop could have been. Before cattle was in the continent, indigenous people knew what strategies they had to use in order to build houses and grow crops: what materials to use, where to locate their towns and the relationship between towns and crops. After cattle arrived, the change is visible: houses can no longer be built with the same materials because oxen and mules can come and destroy them. Crops can no longer be located where they used to be, otherwise risking being eaten by the European animals. In summary, the disruption of life in the landscape meant to modify the connections between their previous inhabitants, changing the meanings and tasks of those who dwelled in the landscape. The current chapter in my empirical material can be connected, on the one hand, to the analysis of actor-network, which I have done throughout the chapter in the form of the thick description of relations between actors. On the other hand, the ethea or ways of life of cattle have been seen to contrast with indigenous people’s life as well as with the species that they have grown and co-habited with. The way of life of cattle, however, did not contrast with that of Spanish settlers, who instead benefitted from the presence of cattle in the landscape by taking the abandoned land of indigenous people. The agenting of cattle is then reflected in how they have been described to relate to others, affecting the lives of other actors in the network. The agenting of cattle, however, goes beyond the physical connection to species in the American continent. In the next chapter, I will explore how cattle changed the relations among Spanish humans.

Shifting relations: cattle, indigenous people, officials and the King

When the process of transcription was under way, it was apparent that each one of the 12 transcribed documents were orders. The official word for them was “Real Cédula”, a Royal Decree by which the King of Spain at the time ordered his officials to act in response to requests or complaints made. In this case, each one of the orders had to do with actions that officials needed to take in regard to ongoing conflicts between cattle and indigenous communities. In order to analyse what the King wanted to be done, I analysed the descriptive code “Orders by the King”, which, as its name implies, included every order issued by the King in each one of these documents. The analysis of the orders is a continuation of the previous chapter, where it was made apparent that the King and the settlers had different priorities and objectives. It is, however, focused on analysing what the King wanted to achieve in each document and, perhaps more importantly, the problems, contradictions or provocations that may have been behind them. Every order represents a particular interest or priority that the King had during a certain time, spanning from 1550 – 1602. This is over 50 years of priorities and orders that, compared in time, could give a glimpse into what ideas surrounded the conflicts between indigenous people and cattle, and what it meant to be King of colonies.

Hierarchy in the network: the King and his officials In a letter dated 24-03-155015, Carlos I of Spain and V of the Holy Roman Empire writes to the Audiencia de Mexico, in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, about a series of damages that indigenous population are receiving due to free-roaming cattle. The King explains how cattle and other livestock damaged farms, with subsequent complaints from indigenous people: Because of many petitions in my own Council of the Indies that have been presented about the estancias several times it has been told to us that the estancias of cattle mares pigs and other minor livestock do damage in the maize crops of the Native Indigenous of this land and especially the cattle that roams unruly and which cannot be guarded which causes the indigenous to go by great labours [...] Through the document, I see that there have been several petitions sent to the Council of the Indies, which at the time was the highest council that treated any matters relating the colonies of Spain. That such petitions had arrived there indicates perhaps some importance to the issues at hand. This intuition is reinforced when realising that this document, and the rest of the analysed ones, are all issued to the Real Audiencia de Nueva España, the maximum level of governance and justice in the Province of New Spain (Mexico), and to the Viceroy of the New

15 1550-03-24 (known), Valladolid. Real Cédula a la Audiencia de México para que provean que las estancias ganaderas se concedan donde no puedan provocar daño a los indios y si se hubiesen de dar, que estén apartadas de los pueblos de los indios para que los ganados no hagan daño a sus maizales y sementeras. 42

Spain. In the previous passage, the King explains that cattle, mares and pigs and other types of cattle, which could have been sheep or goats, were roaming around “unruly” and could not be guarded. As I explored in the previous chapter, these are all species of European origin, brought by Spanish colonisers, species which walked around freely and ate the crops of indigenous people. Not only is the text describing the situation, but it is specifically explaining how these species were acting in the American territory. So dramatic must this presence have been, that petitions had been made to the Council of the Indies, and the King decided decided to intervene on the matter. His orders, in order to deal with the situation, were the following: first, the lands allocated to Spanish settlers are to be designated where no damage can be caused to indigenous people; second, the existing cattle ranches are to be moved away from settlement so that no damage will result from livestock; and third, any damage that has been or will be done to indigenous people, by cattle or other species, is to be paid in full by the owner. These orders appear to try to deal with the issue of cattle and other species eating the crops by changing the conditions that allow cattle to interfere. In other words, the land where they are roaming was to be moved far away from the indigenous cultivated land. The positioning of the land of the settlers in relation to that of indigenous natives is here the main concern. The next order is aimed to dissuade the settlers from allowing their animals to roam close to indigenous land, by ordering them to pay for any damages caused to the crops. How such punishment was to be imposed is not clarified, nor is the way that possible fines for damages are going to be paid to indigenous people. It is also not known if any punishment or fines were indeed given for transgressions to this order. It is clear, however, that the main concern lies on where the land is located in relation to the indigenous people, and not, for example, on the presence of cattle itself in the land. The 1550 letter from Carlos I is not the first document to acknowledge the conflict between cattle and indigenous people. Although I could not discern the contents of this document, the oldest reference to cattle eating the crops of indigenous people in the Spanish ultramarine territories dates to 1528-06-3016, where an encomendero, Diego Muriel, informs the Spanish King about how cattle are being taken to eat from the crops of indigenous natives by people in the Island of San Juan. In regards to the Viceroyalty of New Spain, where the previously analysed text comes from, the oldest reference to cattle causing damage to the crops of indigenous people is dated 1538-04-0817. In this letter Doña Isabel, daughter of Moctezuma, signals that the Marquis del Valle and other people are building cattle mills inside indigenous land, filling them with chickens, pigs, oxen and horses. It is not established in the documents who Moctezuma or Doña Isabel were, but their names could indicate that these were very well known people by the Spanish Council of the Indies. Upon search of secondary sources, it is likely that Doña Isabel refers to Tecuichpotzin, daughter of the ninth Mexica Emperor, Moctezuma Xocoyotzin (Kalyuta, 2008). This means that Tecuichpotzin was speaking on

16 1528-06-30 , Monzón. Real Cédula al Gobernador o juez de residencia de la Isla de San Juan para que se informen si es cierto como dice Diego Muriel, vecino de dicha Isla y encargado de los indios que hay en una hacienda de la ribera de Toa, que en dicha hacienda se entrometen personas que llevan allí sus ganados, contraviniendo las ordenanzas de dicha Isla, y causando perjuicio a la citada hacienda; por lo que pide, que le señalen a esta hacienda de la ribera de Toa, una legua en derredor que le sirva de era para sus ganados, no pudiendo entrar ningunos otros en ella, y envíen dicha información al Consejo de Indias. 17 1538-04-08 , Valladolid. Real cédula a la Audiencia de México para que haga justicia en la solicitud de Doña Isabel, hija de Moctezuma, que se queja de que el marqués del Valle y otras personas han hecho en tierra de los indios, pueblo de Tacuba, cuya encomienda ella tiene, ciertos molinos en los cuales tienen gallinas y puercos y bueyes y caballos que comen las sementeras de los dichos indios de que reciban mucho daño, por lo que suplica se mande que en los dichos molinos no hubiesen las dichas gallinas ni puercos ni bueyes ni caballos sueltos. 43 behalf of indigenous people in order to ask for their rights, because a Marquis and other settlers were using the lands that had been used for their crops for livestock grazing, causing them damages that might have been similar to those described in the letter by Carlos I discussed above, where cattle and other species were still eating the crops. These early documents prove that not only was the problem present since at least the decade of 1530s, but that it had already been discussed, drawing the attention of the Mexican nobility and the Council of the Indies in Spain. The problem was, moreover, felt not only in the Viceroyalty of New Mexico, but also in the islands of the Caribbean. This fits with previous descriptions of the situation, by Crosby (1972, p. 172), who explains how species such as pigs “took over” the islands. It also allows to place the letters from the Real Cédula of 1550 discussed here in a wider historical context. The problem had in fact been reported to Carlos I “in multiple occasions”, as the fragment indeed states. It also shows that the relationship between the King and indigenous people was important to him, considering that indigenous people were the ones producing agricultural products, which the Spanish settlers also needed. The answers from the King to these problems shifted over time. By 1568, the King Felipe II was including in his governmental orders and instructions to the new Viceroy, Martín Enríquez, provisions that would keep Spanish land away from native indigenous cultivated land. Chapters 19 and 2018 of these instructions, as they were titled in the Archivo General de Indias, are: 19. That the cattle ranches of Spanish settlers are not prejudicial to the sementeras of indigenous natives. 20. That the cattle ranches of Spanish settlers that are not located on irrigation land, where indigenous people can grow wheat. These titles show that the previous orders issued by the previous King, Carlos I, about moving the land with cattle away from indigenous land and stopping the damages caused to the crops of indigenous people, were also considered important by the new King Felipe II, even 18 years after the original provisions were issued. Furthermore, the subject of cattle ranches in contrast to irrigation land where wheat can be grown is brought forth, indicating possible conflicts in how the land should be used. The conflict is, however, between two European species, cattle and wheat, showing that any other local species were not taken into account in the cultivating of crops. These two chapters also include some more oversight by the oidores of the Audiencia de México. In the King’s own words: To remedy of it all I ask the oidor to visit one of the main things [unreadable] is to visit the estancias without having been asked to to see if these are in their prejudice or in their land and those that are in their prejudice or in their land are put away legally and passed to other land that is empty without damaging anybody. The order specifies that unannounced inspections should be made to ranches (estancias) to make sure they complied to the order. What these documents indicate is that the issue with cattle continued and what started out as a particular conflict in between indigenous communities and cattle, turned out to be a general problem which needed to be addressed with policies and directives established by the King himself and the Consejo de Indias. Moreover, the oidores are more clearly involved in the process of controlling that the orders are followed:

18 1568-06-07, Aranjuez. Instrucción de gobierno a Martín Enríquez, virrey de Nueva España y presidente de la Audiencia de México. 44 they are to visit the land and see that the location is legal, and if not, such land will be moved. The same document specifies: You will order that that the land is cultivated with wheat and if some of the cattle ranches grow or you see that they do not have a legitimate title that you order them to be moved elsewhere where they stay without prejudice and you will order the indigenous people to grow wheat as in all the irrigation land so that the land is well stocked. The fragment states that the land must be cultivated with wheat, and the indigenous people are to be encouraged to grow it. Between having cattle and growing wheat, says the King, wheat is to be grown so that the land is “well stocked”. A clear directive is set, and once more the priority that these two chapters have in the document reflect the importance of the matter. Cattle are thus no longer causing only one conflict in a particular area of New Spain, but the directives given around cattle are now on the same scale of importance as the exploitation of mines, the export of gold and other metals to the metropolis, the construction of roads and infrastructure in the Viceroyalty, as well as the directives for taxing in the colonies. This importance can be inferred by the placement of these two chapters in the document. These are chapters 19 and 20, in a document that contains 57 chapters written and directed to the Viceroy of New Spain, who after the King Felipe II, is the one in command in the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The escalation of the orders in terms of prevention of crop robbing and sanctions continues, until a point where there is a surge of documents, all dating to 1585. The King Felipe II receives accounts of several problems related to cattle around the areas of Xilotepec (1 document) and Tlaxcala (5 documents). The first document19 is dated 1585-02-15, and speaks of the area called Xilotepec. It deals with the subject of the damage that cattle and their guards are causing to indigenous people’s land, crops, women and daughters. The guards of cattle, in the document, are called mulatos, mestizos and blacks, which refer to the categorisations based on ethnicity used by the Spanish people as a social hierarchy in the colonies. Cattle in the document are mentioned accompanied by several species. In combination, cattle and these other species cause damage to the indigenous peoples’ crops. In this case, the text connects and describes the relation between cattle and their human guards. In the King’s own words: I order you to send to this province what is convenient in order to know about the damages done by the said big cattle which the caretakers and owners [not understandable] and which corresponds to them to pay for such damages and at the same time to prohibit that in this province during no time during the year cattle can use it as grazing land for daily it is more than seven hundred thousand heads of minor cattle […] The orders of the King, as previously said, are aligned with the requests of indigenous to minimise damages. It is said that over 700 000 thousand heads of minor cattle, which could have been sheep, pigs or goats, were roaming the land. The amount gives an idea of the amount of livestock that were present in the area, and the numbers will be explored more in-depth in the next chapter. Moreover, the damages in this document refer specifically to the encounters between cattle and crops, where cattle eat them and invade the land. In addition, the fragment speaks of the violent encounters between the guards of cattle and indigenous people, probably women, who were been attacked, perhaps sexually, by them. The guards of cattle are not

1585-02-15 , Daroca. Real cédula al virrey de Nueva España para que provea lo que sea más conveniente sobre el daño que reciben en sus sementeras y granjerías los indios de Jilotepec por parte de los mestizos, mulatos y negros que van en guarda de sus ganados. 45 specified as Spanish settlers but given different names, and this could perhaps show us a glimpse of the social relations in the area. Slaves and descendants of encounters between Spanish and the indigenous people are the ones working with cattle and guarding them, creating a new set of social relationships. As previously mentioned, this document is the start of a series of orders that indicate an increased interest of the King seeing these conflicts solved. The orders are specific and refer directly to the authority of the Real Audiencia de Mexico so that they are informed of what goes on, in order for them to do what they consider necessary to solve the situation. The King seems aware of the amount of damage that cattle and their human guards are causing over the people and the land, but specifies that the actions to solve it are to be done directly by his officials: I have agreed to refer this request to you so that you see and are informed of all that has happened and is happening and which is convenient and I command you to do it so that the residents and natives of this province do not receive damage nor vexation and that which you do is informed to me […] The King reiterates that indigenous people should not experience damages from the Spanish settlers or other species, and that he is to be informed of the measures taken and the development of the situation. The decision to act in the situation is, however, still dependent on the officials of the Audiencia, and the King does not include any sort of direct order that addresses the issue. Instead, he commands his officials to take measures and decide on the appropriate actions. This is an important distinction, for it shows that the issue was important, but perhaps not important enough so that the King would take matters into his own hands. About two months later, the King issues a new set of orders in 5 documents, all dated to the 16th of April of 1585. From one document in 1538, to another one in 1550, we arrive at a point where five documents are issued in the same day, all dealing with orders to stop the damage from cattle to the indigenous population. The latter 5 documents are written in behalf of the caciques, don Pedro de Torres, don Diego Téllez and don Zacarías de Santiago, their interpreter, Diego Muñoz Camargo, and the governor of the Province, Don Antonio de Guevara. These caciques, as I mentioned in the previous chapter, were political and religious leaders of the communities in the area, who in this case tell the King about the damages that they had suffered both by cattle and by the Spanish settlers. The King responds to these complaints with five orders. It is important to keep in mind that Tlaxcala, as I explained in the previous chapter, was a province located between Veracruz, a coastal city, and Ciudad de Mexico, the capital of the Viceroyalty. In that sense, it was probably a point of exchange and passage, where people and merchandises were passed through between the harbour and the city, and vice-versa. These five documents on Tlaxcala dealt in their entirety on the issues of indigenous people in the province. This was now 39 years after the first document discussed in this chapter, and around 60 years after the first case of crop robbing was registered in writing. The problem, nevertheless, seems to be escalating. The new orders represent a new level of awareness, where the problem is not only a matter of State, but one that will cause severe consequences to those who do not follow the orders issued by the King. The first document20 in these series of five deals with the issue of Spanish officials taking the land of indigenous people. In the King’s own words:

20 1585-04-16 , Poblet. Real cédula al virrey de Nueva España y la Audiencia de México para que vean las ordenanzas que han de hacer los indios de Tlaxcala sobre la proliferación de ganados en aquellas tierras. 46

Many Spanish who have bought land from the natives and others who have married in those lands with the lands and posessions that they have gotten with their women or bought them want to populate them with numbers of livestock oxen horses sheep goats and pigs which is in prejudice of the natives... According to the fragment, they accomplished this by, on the one hand, buying the land; and on the other, by marrying indigenous women. Their purpose was, according to the text, to use the land to have cattle, pigs, and other “minor livestock” (pigs, chickens, goats, sheep, etcetera). The King refers to the “current situation” and addresses the Audiencia to solve the issue, but does not specify what measures to take in order to solve the issue. The previous text provides an insight into the way that Spanish settlers related to indigenous people and to non-human species. On the one hand, as the text explains, they marry indigenous women to take their land. I interpret this passage as a way of using their marriage as an excuse to take over the land and dispossess indigenous people from what they owned. The land, in this sense, is transformed to become Spanish, by creating titles and other sorts of documents that prove that it belongs to them. On the other, it reveals that Spanish settlers were using the land to breed European livestock. If the reports of livestock eating crops are included in the narrative, this means that the crops and plants and, effectively, indigenous people, were being replaced by livestock and Spanish settlers. The landscape was being transformed, as the text implies, one marriage at a time. The relevance of this fragment lies, moreover, on how the relationship between Spanish settlers and non-human animals, as well as their ways of thinking of the land and engaging in relationships with indigenous people, were modifying the landscape and changing it into a set of privately owned lots, filled with livestock and with Spanish settlers’ family structures. The next document21 in the series of five deals with the damages done by oxen and mules that roam around the area. As it is written in the document: They pray that to remedy this situation, in case that by the Province they [the cattle] were to pass they did so with guard and that pens are built wherever they are to spend the night which are known sites and places so that they do not spread out during the night and cause damages and that the Justices without any remission do punish the crimes and that payments are done in respect to the damages that the indigenous people’s land are receiving... The caciques, in the text, are asking for cattle to pass with guards, so that cattle can be controlled and not allowed to roam freely. Above all, however, they are asking for measures to make sure that cattle are not allowed to pass. The letter adds that if it was indeed necessary that cattle passed and spent the night in their land, that they were kept in a fenced enclosure, so that they do not walk around and eat all their crops. In this respect, the King orders measures in terms of punishments or payments for the damage that indigenous people are receiving. The cattle damage is defined almost as a crime, where there can be fines to be paid when it is committed. It springs to attention that the caciques are requesting for guards to accompany cattle, perhaps expecting these guards to protect their crops from the presence of cattle. It is a paradoxical situation, considering the fragment analysed before in this section, where guards of cattle are accused of attacking indigenous women and children. Given the context, I infer

21 1585-04-16 , Poblet. Real cédula a al virrey de Nueva España y la Audiencia de México para que vean las ordenanzas que han de hacer los indios principales de la provincia de Tlaxcala, con el fin de que sus sementeras y granjerías no reciban daño de los bueyes y mulas de las carretas que pasan por ellas. 47 that the guards were there to protect the cattle from indigenous people, and not the other way around. The other documents have a similar content: the King orders that decisions are taken by his officials, not taking himself any sort of position in the matter. The King does consider the requests, however, and orders his officials to impart justice. In the same way, in the next document the King proceeds to rule about the limits of the land that were being violated and changed22 by Spanish settlers. Following with the next document, the King orders moreover that no more cattle than what is strictly necessary is allowed in the province, specifically talking about butchers who were introducing great quantities of livestock in the area23. In the next one in the series, the King establishes rules about the harvesting of crops and grazing, specifying that indigenous people are allowed to take their legumes before any cattle is allowed to roam the area24. These three documents represent particular ways in which the land was being appropriated and will be analysed in depth in the upcoming section of this chapter. After these Cédulas were issued, there is a sort of hiatus in the orders that are sent to the New Spain. The next document is dated 1586, and in it, the King specifically addresses the ownership of land by Spanish ministers and officials in the land. The request and initial contact come from the indigenous people of Chachalentlán and Coabitlán, who accuse the officials, secretaries and ministers of justice of the region of causing damages to their crops and lands by having a great number of livestock. On the subject, and almost a year after the previous six analysed documents, the King says: Having been seen by my Council of the Indies it was settled that I sent this my Real Cedula by which I order you to see what has been said and to rule in it what is most convenient and that you keep particularly in mind that the above-mentioned natives do not receive damage and if you think that it is convenient for such purpose and so that the natives do not receive any more damage that the said officials and ministers do not have these lands [,] you will take them away from them for it is my will that they do not receive any more damage in any other matter25… His orders are now more specific, stating that anyone who is found to have caused damages to indigenous people are to be punished by reclaiming the lease or concession of their land. It is the first document, after 50 years of requests by indigenous people, in which the King establishes a direct measure to counteract the taking of land and the “vexations”, as the King called them, that indigenous people were being subject to. Furthermore, the order makes a direct mentioning of different officials, namely “secretaries” and “ministers of justice”, who were likely officials working in the administration of justice of the Real Audiencia. The document implies that these officials were abusing their position in this institution, a situation

22 1585-04-16 , Poblet. Real cédula a la Audiencia de México para que vea sobre lo que piden los indios de Tlaxcala, de que se cambien las mojoneras y se derriben las casas en las estancias y caballerías que se hubiesen tomado sin licencia. 23 1585-04-16 , Poblet. Real cédula a la Audiencia de México para que provea sobre lo que piden los indios de Tlaxcala, de que los proveedores de las carnicerías de la ciudad no lleven allí más ganado del necesario, ya que aprovechan para engordarlo en sus sementeras. 24 1585-04-16 , Poblete. Real cédula al virrey y Audiencia de México para que a petición de Antonio de Guevara, Pedro de Torres, Diego Téllez y Zacarías de Santiago, caciques de Tlaxcala y de Diego Muñoz Camargo, su intérprete, provean lo más conveniente sobre las ordenanzas sobre agostaderos para que no reciban agravio metiendo el ganado en sus tierras hasta haber cogido sus legumbres. 25 1586-04-13 , San Lorenzo el Real. Real cédula al Marqués de Villamanrique, virrey de Nueva España, ordenándole examinar la petición de los naturales de los pueblos de "Chachalentlán" y "Coabitlán" y sus sujetos, así como de otros, acerca de que no se permitiera a los oficiales, secretarios y ministros de justicia tener ganados, estancias ni granjerías, de lo que se derivaban daños para los indios, y que proveyera lo que conviniera, de manera que los naturales no recibieran más daño. 48 that is relevant for a dispute about land for it is these officials the ones that the King has been referring to, in previous documents, so that the conflicts can be solved. Considering that the King has been issuing orders to solve the issue for several years, and it is in fact the same officials in charge of administering justice in the Viceroyalty that are disobeying the orders, then the escalation of the orders by the King and the new specificity in these measures is logical. In summary, those that were supposed to solve the conflict were, in fact, causing it in the first place. The next document26, dated 1589, is a repetition of the orders issued in 1568 by the King Felipe II. Once again, it is a series of orders and governing mandates that need to be taken into account by the new viceroy, Luis de Velasco. The texts in question treat almost the same issues as before and, in regard to the chapters about cattle, the text is almost identical. The instructions of the King deal again with the fact that Spanish people are taking the land of indigenous people, and that it is being used for purposes other than growing wheat. The new Viceroy, the King says, needs to take this situation into account in order to make it so that the indigenous people do not experience any more damages. The last document27 is dated 1602, and is probably the last instance in which the conflict between cattle and indigenous people is mentioned in the entirety of the Archivo General de Indias, with the exception of a document from 1607 in which the judicial process is moved to another jurisdiction28. This last document refers directly to the displacement of indigenous people, which has in turn impeded the cultivation of wheat in the area. The King, after explaining the situation, orders: I have decided it to be good to send this my Cedula, by which I order that you do Justice shortly and briefly to the abovementioned indigenous people in what they ask and that you send me an account of what happens there and what is convenient to rule about it, so that seen the situation, it is ruled what is convenient (Consejo de Indias (España) and Felipe III of Spain, 1602) Once again, the King demands that justice is done and that decisions are taken by his officials. It is, however, the only instance where displacement is signalled as a consequence for the presence of cattle in the landscape, a situation that parallels and is reminiscent of the consequences of the process of colonisation by human actants. Only this time, as I have argued, it is cattle causing such displacement. In summary, the 6 documents issued in 1585 represent a peak in the urgency of the issue, while the last 3 documents were dedicated to repeat orders that had already been written, only to have the subject of cattle and indigenous people disappear by 1602. The analysis of the orders by the King allows us to see, on the one hand, the level of importance this issue had in the King’s Council of the Indies and in the King’s agenda. As I have shown in how it was included in the instructions the King sent to his viceroys, the conflict between cattle and indigenous people was raised to be a matter of importance to the government, as important even as taxation and the extraction of minerals. Nevertheless, my analysis of the orders issued in the Real Cédulas indicate that, although the matter was

26 1589-07-19 , San Lorenzo. Instrucción de gobierno a Luis de Velasco [y Castilla], virrey de Nueva España y presidente de la Audiencia de México. 27 1602-05-15 , Aranjuez. Real cédula al virrey de Nueva España y la Audiencia de México para que hagan justicia breve y sumariamente sobre lo que piden los indios de la ciudad y provincia de Texcoco de no recibir daño ni agravio en sus sementeras por la abundancia de bueyes, caballos, mulas y otros ganados menores que se las comen y destruyen. 28 1607 (probably [note from the archivists]). Traslado de auto acordado de la Audiencia de Guadalajara de 5 de julio de 1595 para que los dueños de ganados los traigan con guarda y no les hagan daños a los indios en sus sementeras. 49 important, the issue seemed not to be resolved. The previous analysis is a snapshot of the network of social links and interactions, as well as their consequences and the impact that non- human animals, like cattle, had in the way the dwellers lived on the landscape.

Power and Agency in the New Spain: Who is the King, anyway? In the latest section, I showed how the King of Spain, in at least 12 occasions, sent orders to his officials in order to address the conflict between cattle and indigenous people. Cattle were eating their crops, the land was being illegally taken, and cattle were being prioritised over the cultivation of crops. However, the number of orders and how these overlap each other over a period of 50 years indicate that the King was not being obeyed. Despite being a Monarchy, the documents reveal that Spain was in fact not being necessarily ruled by the King, but that a new way of handling judicial and governmental issues was at play. The reasons for this new “way” of handling issues could have to do with the distance between the King and the network on the New Spain. I mean the distance, not in a geographical sense, but instead as the diminished connection between the King and the actors that dwelled in the New Spain. His position in the network was that of a figure of authority that was legally and nominally the ruler, but who in reality (a reality where the connections, influences, alliances, and distributions matter) did not have the capacity to make his orders come through. If the King was trying to do “agenting”, trying to make his actions have consequences, these were not truly changing the way actors behaved. Pragmatically, how the network worked had to do more with the relations between cattle, Spanish settlers, indigenous people and their alliances and connections, and not so much with the Spanish imperial administration or the King. Who the King was, and what it meant to be King in Spain, turns out to be not the same as what it meant in the New Spain. The meaning and explanations on the actions of actors depend on the explanations given by the actors in the network. In the case of the King, the explanations given on his actions depended on the few not-so-strong connections that he had with his officials in the New Spain (perhaps his Viceroys, to whom he directs letters). In that case, he did not have power to make his orders come through. In Spain, by contrast, his connections, influence and alliances made him able and powerful to make his orders come through, defining what he meant in the network. A very different meaning, as previously said, than the one he had in the American continent. The current analysis is connected to the Actor-Network Theory analysis of meaning. In the current case, meaning is not constructed only by defining strictly the name of an actor, but it also has to do with how other actors construct themselves and others. The King of Spain is not only King in name, but his position needs to be acknowledged and constructed also by other actors in the network. Moreover, his position needs to be that of an actor that can influence others in the network, position which in the case of the New Spain, does not seem to be effective. Nevertheless, the position is not acknowledged not because his subjects decide to do so, but I argue that it is because of how cattle exercised agency. As Spanish officials saw the way the King acted when faced with an issue like the one with cattle, I argue that the meaning of who the King is and what kind of power he can exercise was profoundly changed, setting the stage for a different way of governing in the New Spain.

Work relations in the New Spain In the previous section of this chapter, I explained how the King ordered to have guards be with cattle in order to avoid damaging the cultivated land of indigenous people. However, these shepherds were causing damages, as stated in 2 other instantes. One of them, from 1586, states that: The shepherds of such officials make big efforts and vexations and damages to the abovementioned natives and their women and children and that even though the local mayors and corregidores see them and entienen by touching such officials by whose hand their residences are to pass they conceal it and so are left without punishment29 […] The text explains how these shepherds30, who were guarding the cattle, were violent towards indigenous women and children, as the King states, causing “damages”. These shepherds were hired and protected, explains the document, by officials that were part of the Audiencia de México. The situation, as I infer by the document, was probably that the officials of the Audiencia were in fact owners of the cattle that were eating the crops of indigenous people. If these officials were being addressed by the King to solve the issue, but they are, in fact, the ones involved directly in the matter, then any sort of solution to the issue of cattle invading lands would have been impossible to achieve. The figure of the shepherds is once again mentioned in another document, where they are described and categorised in social groups. The document31 states: The natives of the land had received and received notable damages in their sementeras and lands and were abused and harassed by the mestizo mulatto and blacks that go and guard of such cattle taking them and by force their land tents women and daughters […] (Consejo de Indias (España) and Felipe II of Spain, 1585a) In this section, it is said that not only are indigenous people still getting damages in their crops, but also that they are being “abused and harassed” by the guards of cattle. In the text is is hinted that the guards of cattle were probably raping indigenous women. No reasons are stated in the documents to why this was happening, but the closeness of the dates between the documents indicate that it was a common occurrence. There is no exact number on the amount of guards that cattle had. However, some documents32 suggested that the passage of oxen between the coastal city of Veracruz to Ciudad de México could have been around 20 thousand oxen, without counting the mules that “are a lot more”, as one of the document states. If that amount of cattle is to be managed, then the amount of

29 1586-04-13 , San Lorenzo el Real. Real cédula al Marqués de Villamanrique, virrey de Nueva España, ordenándole examinar la petición de los naturales de los pueblos de "Chachalentlán" y "Coabitlán" y sus sujetos, así como de otros, acerca de que no se permitiera a los oficiales, secretarios y ministros de justicia tener ganados, estancias ni granjerías, de lo que se derivaban daños para los indios, y que proveyera lo que conviniera, de manera que los naturales no recibieran más daño. 30 In Spanish, “pastores”. 31 1585-02-15 , Daroca. Real cédula al virrey de Nueva España para que provea lo que sea más conveniente sobre el daño que reciben en sus sementeras y granjerías los indios de Jilotepec por parte de los mestizos, mulatos y negros que van en guarda de sus ganados. 32 1585-04-16 , Poblet. Real cédula al virrey de Nueva España y la Audiencia de México para que vean las ordenanzas que han de hacer los indios de Tlaxcala sobre la proliferación de ganados en aquellas tierras; 1585-04-16 , Poblet. Real cédula a al virrey de Nueva España y la Audiencia de México para que vean las ordenanzas que han de hacer los indios principales de la provincia de Tlaxcala, con el fin de que sus sementeras y granjerías no reciban daño de los bueyes y mulas de las carretas que pasan por ellas. 51 guards that must have passed with these species could have been hundreds. The two passages of these documents reveal that it was the link between cattle, other livestock and humans working in a way that affected indigenous people. The previous excerpts mention “blacks, mestizos y mulattos” as the ones guarding cattle. They are mentioned in a negative light because, according to the texts, they are being violent towards indigenous women and children. The fragment and the documents in general are not specific about the actions that were being done, however there is enough information to guide us into creating a complex network of social contacts in the region. On the one hand, that “blacks, mestizos y mulattos” are specifically mentioned as the ones working with cattle can serve as a starting point to see the points of contact in between cattle and human beings. And on the other hand, that these workers are the ones committing violent acts against indigenous people can indicate negative associations to them, especially due to the stark differences between the social status of Spanish settlers and them. In the first place, it is important to keep in mind that the group of guards of cattle are mentioned to be of different skin colours, which seem to be used in order to also socially stratify or qualify who they were. Slaves, on the one hand, and mixes between indigenous, black and Spanish people, are mentioned as the ones who guard cattle. The “guarding” is not specified, but in context, it could mean both guarding cattle from getting hurt or stolen (as shepherds) and stopping cattle from entering indigenous peoples’ houses and cultivated land. The introduction of slaves, by the end of the XVI century, happens in a context where indigenous people’s population has diminished so much, due to sickness and forced labour, that they are unable to make alliances and propose their own agenda. Mestizos and mulatos, the name given to children of Black and Spanish and Indigenous and Black ascendancy, respectively, were part of the most vulnerable populations in the continent: African blacks in slavery; indigenous people weakened by sickness, loss of land and their social organisation; and mestizos and mulatos without any social rights. In spite of the similarities between these social groups, it seems to be the case in these texts that indigenous people consider themselves different to slaves, mestizos and mulatos. The latter, they argue, are being violent towards them. This could explain why in the texts there is no mention of other groups of people who were also living in the New Spain (like the abovementioned slaves, mestizos and mulatos) who could create alliances between each other. Instead, what we find is a relation of antagonism in which the Spanish are not shown as part of the conflict, despite being the owners of the cattle and disobeying the orders issued by the King to stop cattle from roaming freely and destroying indigenous people’s crops. In other words, the association between colour of skin and social status seems to be a political theme that creates antagonism.

Where should cattle be located in the landscape? One common point of every order issued by the King is that they all deal somehow with the placement of cattle. This means that, to the King, the solution to solve the conflict between indigenous people and cattle is to move cattle away from the place where they are causing damage. It is a view of non-human animals in which, if any damage is caused, it is because it has not been led properly by its shepherds to suitable places. In that case, the non-human species is the responsibility of a human lead, who are to make sure that they are placed where they should be. Quite literally, such a figure is that of a shepherd, a guard of the animals, but I argue that it also includes the oidores, secretaries and ministers of justice previously mentioned, who were supposed to decide and make justice on the conflict, making sure that 52 cattle were located where they should be, without causing any damage to indigenous people or their crops. These shepherds also seem to protect cattle while at the same time causing damage to indigenous people. The documents stated that the shepherds attacked indigenous people, possibly raping indigenous women and children. The secretaries and ministers of justice also affected indigenous population by taking their land, through marriage or purchase. It is a paradox in which the King, although aiming to solve the situation through his officials, could not make those orders come through. As I argued in the previous section, the shepherds were for protection of cattle, not of indigenous people. All of the previous information reveals a scenario in which indigenous ’demands and needs are contrary to cattle’s presence in the landscape. In the fourth document33 of 1585, Felipe II rules about the limits of land that had been established and that were been violated by Spanish settlers, to which the King follows the requests of the indigenous people and asks the Audiencia to rule as necessary for he and his Council find that these requests are just and necessary. The requests, as written by the King, have to do with people invading indigenous land and removing the delimitation that had been done. In the King’s words: The abovementioned boundary markers are renewed and to settle and demolish the houses of such ranches and cavallerias that have been taken and did not have a license of mine and of my Viceroys and that these are returned to their owners and that these terms and boundary markers are respected so graves penas and having been seen by those in my Council of the Indies it was accorded that I must send this my Cedula by which I order you to see over what has been said and about what goes on with it and that you decide on it so that the indigenous people are not damaged… Felipe II is requesting in this fragment that the previously set delimitations are to be renewed, which probably meant that the previous boundary markers that were present in the land are placed again where they used to be. Furthermore, he orders that the land of the newcomers who settled in those places illegally are taken away, including the cattle ranches and other sorts of activities that were happening inside those plots. If the orders were not followed, the King explained, then punishments would ensue. In this situation, the old and the new are put in contrast: the old delimitations and markers, the new constructions and cattle ranches in the landscape. The request by indigenous people to have the old delimitations renewed could arguably show that there is a desire to revert back to a previous situation, one in which cattle ranches were not present in the area, where indigenous people could grow their crops and live unrestrained. Taken further, it could be argued that there is a desire to go back, perhaps, to when the new dwellers were not there. Where cattle, Spanish settlers, chickens, mules, horses and sheep are gone from the landscape. This situation can also be exemplified by the issue of meat production in the area. This document34 was briefly mentioned in one of the previous sections, exemplifying how the the King once again considers that the requests of the indigenous people are just, and that the Real Audiencia must make justice and ensure that the land is well governed. The request in question, as written by the King, was:

33 1585-04-16 , Poblet. Real cédula a la Audiencia de México para que vea sobre lo que piden los indios de Tlaxcala, de que se cambien las mojoneras y se derriben las casas en las estancias y caballerías que se hubiesen tomado sin licencia. 34 1585-04-16 , Poblet. Real cédula a la Audiencia de México para que provea sobre lo que piden los indios de Tlaxcala, de que los proveedores de las carnicerías de la ciudad no lleven allí más ganado del necesario, ya que aprovechan para engordarlo en sus sementeras. 53

That it is not allowed that the abovementioned parties [butchers] to bring more cattle than what is necessary for provisions and that they roam by the egidos signaled by the city and not in the swamps of Atlancatepac and those of Philipe and Texupa and that particularly they are not allowed to roam by the cornfields and sementeras or however these are… The King argues for the sustainment of a situation of equilibrium, where only that which is strictly necessary is brought, and not anything more. This proposal comes from indigenous people, I argue, for the King is following and describing, as he has in all the previous documents, what indigenous poeple have told him. This means that the idea of balance and equilibrium could come from indigenous people, contrasting deeply with the the actions of meat providers and even cattle, the latter being in the thousands of heads of cattle in their territory. There is one more situation that exemplifies the previous contradictions. This document35, again dating from 1585, refers to the request of indigenous people to be allowed to pick up their legumes before cattle is allowed to roam. In this case, the King makes it clear that the problem (and this probably refers to more densely settled areas) here is sheep that roam around the area. In this case we are lucky as the King repeats the requests of the caciques, who ask that: General damage is not to be allowed over particular good and that I rule that such cattle is not allowed to go into their sementeras before they have picked up their legumes and hecho su agosto or as the merced was and that because it has been seen by my Royal Council of the Indies that by what has been said damage is being done to them and to remedy it I have ordered to answer that you do your ordinances and take it to my Real Audiencia I order you that you having done and presented them that you see and rule that which you think is convenient in this situation (Consejo de Indias (España) and Felipe II of Spain, 1585f) The King is asking here that indigenous people are allowed to do their activities, in the landscape, before cattle are allowed to roam around the area. It is as if cattle could not be stopped from roaming around, and what instead should be done is to schedule when cattle should do so: that is, after indigenous people have picked up their crops. Although the orders here issued were given by the King, the specificity of the request implies that this was in fact a direct proposal by the 3 caciques, don Pedro de Torres, don Diego Téllez, don Zacarías de Santiago and their interpreter, Diego Muñoz Camargo. Furthermore, I argue that the 5 documents I have analysed, throughout most of this chapter, are in fact the three caciques and their translator speaking through the written voice of the King. Their voices could still be heard from these documents, and what they reveal is a landscape where the old social relations are crashing, and the new social and ecological links are stronger. The conceptualisation of micro-powers by Foucault can complement the analysis done so far with Actor Network Theory. The snapshot of power relations and how they were exercised includes the eating of indigenous peoples’ crops, the use of cattle guards who harassed and abused them, and the taking of land by Spanish settlers. These practices, in this particular context, define a way of exercising power particular to the New Spain, where the antagonism between cattle and

35 1585-04-16 , Poblete. Real cédula al virrey y Audiencia de México para que a petición de Antonio de Guevara, Pedro de Torres, Diego Téllez y Zacarías de Santiago, caciques de Tlaxcala y de Diego Muñoz Camargo, su intérprete, provean lo más conveniente sobre las ordenanzas sobre agostaderos para que no reciban agravio metiendo el ganado en sus tierras hasta haber cogido sus legumbres. 54 indigenous people is clearer: the network of cattle, guards and Spanish settlers, subjugating indigenous people through a set of practices and activities. The dichotomies in the landscape seem to be clear: new land divisions versus old boundaries, cattle versus legumes and wheat, cattle ranches versus sementeras, old divisions of labor and new divisions of labor. These opposing activities were under negotiation during these first decades of encounters, where the taskscape (Ingold, 1993) was being shaped and moved to play another kind of tune. It is now the music of European species roaming, stomping, walking, eating, flattening the land, shaping the landscape for the benefit of grazing and European settlers of all kinds. Indigenous people, in this context, seem to fight back and struggle to keep their own array of activities together, in an effort to maintain their landscape and taskscape as it used to be. Their way of acting, as I have shown in this chapter, was to communicate directly to the King. There were perhaps other ways in which indigenous people resisted this invasion, but the data shows no signs of these other ways of resisting. In this new landscape cattle and other species graze and walk freely, literally eating the products of the activities that indigenous people used to do. Indigenous people’s dwelling in the land drastically changed, and it was now in complete opposition to that of cattle, pigs, horses, mules, and the Spanish humans themselves.

The landscape of the New Spain: before and after cattle

Through the analyses of the written documents, I have traced cattle in the New Spain: its activities, the consequences of their actions in the landscape, and how ideas, social relations and ecological networks shifted when cattle were introduced in the landscape. In this chapter, I would like to continue tracing cattle but this time, through the ideas that were circulating during this time and that contextualised the place of cattle in the landscape. These ideas, as I will explore in this chapter, will help understand better how landscape modification is a more- than-human process.

The landscape for Spanish settlers: a transhumant ecology One of the authors that have also seen landscape modification as a more-than-human process is Andrew Sluyter (1998, 1996; Sluyter and Duvall, 2016). His research, which has mostly focused on the New Spain, recognises the influence of cattle ranching in the modification of the American continent. In this sense, it is important to differentiate between the influence of cattle ranching and of cattle itself. The first one, and on which Sluyter focuses, refers to the activity, in which human beings are the actors that lead cattle and who, in turn, decide and act. The latter is about the influence of cattle itself, as a species (the theoretical standpoint that I use to speak about cattle will be further explored in the second part of this chapter). One of Sluyter’s contributions to the study of cattle in the Spanish colonies is his comparison between cattle ranching in the Iberian Peninsula and the ranching done in the Viceroyalty of New Spain (Sluyter, 1996). The author explains that the introduction of cattle and other species (horses, mules, donkeys, sheep, goats, and pigs) brought with it a series of ecological institutions that in turn contributed to how the landscape was transformed. These ecological institutions, although not directly defined by the author, seem to refer to landscape and management practices and traditions coming from the home regions of the Spanish settlers. In Andalucía, for example, managing cattle took place in what Sluyter calls a “transhumant ecology”, a series of relations in the landscape, with movements following droughts and floods that in turn modified the landscape (Sluyter, 1996; see also Fig. 1).

Figure 1. Sluyter's map explaining the regional-scale ecological relations of transhumance.

With the similarities between the region of Veracruz, in the New Spain, and the lands of Andalucía in Spain, the Spanish settlers recognised that cattle ranching could be done similarly in Veracruz to how it was done in the landscape of Andalucía. When it was dry season, cattle were brought to graze close to the coast of Veracruz. When it was wet season, and the lower lands were flooded, cattle were brought up to the higher lands. This particular way of relating to dry and wet seasons was similar to activities in Andalucía, as previously stated, but very different from the indigenous way of managing seasons. The process of moving cattle back and forth from the higher parts of the land to the lower areas, and vice-versa, modified the landscape in so far as it modified the taskscape, by creating a new series of movements that were similar to those that shepherds did in the landscapes of southern Spain, in Andalucía36. Sluyter’s analysis is valuable for it introduces cattle in the realm of landscape modification. However, cattle are still in a second place, their actions the result of Spanish settlers who decided to place a certain cattle ranch in a particular area, or who decided to do business here instead of elsewhere. In this sense, in Sluyter’s analysis, the human actor is given a far more influencing role, whereas the non-human follows along their actions. Resistance, by the human or non-human, is not present in Sluyter’s narrative. Nevertheless, this does not diminish the contributions by Sluyter (1998) and Sluyter and Duvall (2016), in explaining the further influence of cattle and other actors, like fire. Fire-cultures, as Sluyter and Duvall (2016) call them, were commonplace practice among some African and indigenous peoples, by burning the land in order to make it ready for growing crops. Analytically, fire-cultures are poorly known, and we can only speculate how and in what mode the landscape in America was modified. Fire-cultures, however, put in perspective the influence that African slaves had in the relations between people and their environment. In this context, cattle was an interacting agent with fire cultures, as Sluyter and Duvall (2016) explain, as fires played a vital role in how cattle grazed. For instance, the timing of the burnings modified the way crops were grown and the way non-human animals transited the land. The use of fire also brings another seasonality to the landscape, in how crops are managed and used, aside of the temporality of

36 Crosby (2003) would call this process “Europa-forming”. 57 rain. In summary, fire was used to clear land for agriculture, but as cattle followed and kept the land open, the modifications to the landscape grew in scale. Methodologically, Sluyter proves that archive information can be used to reconstruct the way the land was used and how it looked several hundred years ago (Sluyter, 1998). The reconstructive work done by Sluyter in the area of Veracruz is proof that that archival sources can be used to trace the impact of non-human and human species in the way landscapes were used. Such reconstructions can be used combined with the accounts that I have used in the current thesis to map the modifications to the landscape. One of the interesting finds of Sluyter has to do with the numbers of cattle and sheep that roamed the Viceroyalty of New Spain. According to Sluyter, by 1619, in a total area of 481.419 hectares, there were between 75.722 to 378.610 heads of cattle. The calculations are broad for no exact numbers on this issue are present in other sources. If this information is contrasted with previous accounts in the current text, by 1585 there could have been more than 700 000 heads of minor cattle, and more than 20 thousand oxen passing by the area of Tlaxcala, between Veracruz and Ciudad de México. Sluyter’s numbers and those presented previously in the thesis can be used as a reference point, placing cattle in the landscape almost as a geological force, that stomped on the land and modified, as I have explored in this thesis, how the landscape looked, how human actors interacted and dwelled in the landscape (particularly indigenous people), and even how other species could live on it. The information provided by Sluyter (1998) also informs on the extent of the modification of the landscape in Veracruz (Fig. 2). Sluyter’s map, based on archive sources, is reproduced here.

Figure 2. Sluyter's map showing the number of cattle ranches present in the region of Veracruz.

On the map it is represented how, by the beginning of the XVII century, a big part of Veracruz and adjacent regions had in fact been given to Spanish settlers and were probably being used as cattle ranches. The map thus puts the letters of complaint from indigenous communities to the King, discussed in previous chapters, in a broader context, informed now by the reconstruction of titles of land done by Sluyter (1998). The map shows how between 1540- 1610 the cattle ranches were expanding, decade by decade, filling the land with cattle which could roam in the area. By the 1610s, as the last picture in the figure shows, a big part of the land in Veracruz had been given over to cattle ranches. The situation was probably similar in Ciudad de México and Tlaxcala, meaning that the region where the complaints of indigenous people are placed was probably flooded with all sorts of livestock, and particularly with cows and oxen. This, I argue, is the way power was exercised in the region: the Spanish settlers introduced practices and activities that subjugated indigenous people, including the taking of land and the appropriation of it by introducing cattle. Furthermore, with the information that I have gathered and analysed throughout this thesis, the situation is in fact more complex. I argue that, due to cattle’s free roaming activities and practices, joined with the ideas that circulated around the time and that explained their presence in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, 59 a new regime of ideas and practices was formed in the area. Cowlonialism, as I call this process, was the result of the networks and links created between cattle and other livestock. The process of landscape modification and appropriation is thus a more-than-human process, where cattle exercise power and create relations of meaning in which their presence in the network, and their activities, are predominant and subdue other actors in the network, like indigenous people, but also other non-human species that had been dwelling in the landscape of the New Spain. The concept will be further analysed in the conclusions, as a summary of the analysis done throughout this thesis. Another idea that complements the current cartographical representations, one that circulated around the time, was that the continent of America was vast, and that there was space for all the newcomers. As I will explore in the upcoming section, the consequences of this idea set up the backstage for the taking and modification of the landscape by cattle and Spanish settlers.

Nature is big and vast: we all fit in the new land The vastness of the landscape is an idea that stood out from the documents. On two occasions, in the communications between the King and his officials in the New Spain, the King directly expressed the reason why he thought there should be no issues regarding where cattle and indigenous people are settled. In one document37, the King writes: To remedy it all [unintelligible] that the oidor went to visit one of the main things of his charge is to visit the abovementioned ranches without being wanted so that if they are in their prejudice or in their lands and those that are in their prejudice or in their land of his own rule are made to be taken and passed somewhere else that is empty land without damaging anybody because by God’s grace the land is so large and so big that everybody can very well fit without doing damage to one another... In the fragment, the King puts emphasis on how the land is empty and large, so it is not logical that there are any sorts of conflicts. The emptiness of the land, I infer, perhaps comes from the knowledge the King has about the numbers of indigenous people who died during the XVI century, and who left in turn the territory unpopulated, not only in New Spain but all over the continent (Koch et al., 2019). The argument by the King is that, if there is so much available land, then those who are damaging indigenous people should move, or vice-versa. The authority to make such changes was on the oidores under the Real Audiencia de México, who would decide on the matter depending on what they saw fit. The second time that the idea of the vastness of the landscape is mentioned was in a similar type of document, one in which the King sends a series of instructions to his new Viceroy regarding different subjects of importance in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, including the above-mentioned issue with cattle38. The idea is very clear in both cases: the land is big, vast and empty, thus we can all fit. In the documents, moving around the landscape is seen as an advantage, where indigenous people can move whenever needed in order to make room for

37 1586-04-13 , San Lorenzo el Real. Real cédula al Marqués de Villamanrique, virrey de Nueva España, ordenándole examinar la petición de los naturales de los pueblos de "Chachalentlán" y "Coabitlán" y sus sujetos, así como de otros, acerca de que no se permitiera a los oficiales, secretarios y ministros de justicia tener ganados, estancias ni granjerías, de lo que se derivaban daños para los indios, y que proveyera lo que conviniera, de manera que los naturales no recibieran más daño. 38 1589-07-19 , San Lorenzo. Instrucción de gobierno a Luis de Velasco [y Castilla], virrey de Nueva España y presidente de la Audiencia de México. 60 cattle, on the one hand, and for Spanish settlers, on the other. As the maps by Sluyter (1998) showed in the previous section, it seemed that land titles were given constantly to Spanish settlers, so indigenous people had to moved often. The effects of this idea were significant and can be most clearly seen by Sluyter’s work on the amount of land that was being used in the area of Veracruz to have cattle: hundreds of thousands of acres, titled to Spanish settlers, in which between 75.722 to 378.610 heads of cattle were roaming over it by the beginning of the XVII century. If such a situation is taken further and extrapolated to the entire area of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the number of cattle, I argue, including domesticated and semi-feral herds, could have been on the magnitude of millions by the end of the XVI century. These numbers are to be taken into consideration as they show how, in contrast to the way King has framed the conflict between indigenous people and cattle, there was in fact reason to believe that cattle and the Spanish settlers were causing damage to the indigenous people, and that despite the room that the Spanish King thought to be available to expand, the landscape was increasingly populated with cattle and Spanish settlers. The idea that the land is vast might be related to an Edenistic view of the landscape, with vast resources available to humans, as I explored in previous chapters in regards to the influence of Catholic ideas in the way Spanish settlers related to non-human animals. The explanations for the existence of America, although diverse, converged in one major theme that can be tied to the image that the Spanish settlers had of the continent: they had found the Garden of Eden, so varied in species and with so many different animals, plants and people, once thought to be lost to humans but now, at last, found. This was perhaps an idea that pervaded the colonial thought not only of Spain, but of other colonial empires regarding the landscape of America. The “New World”, the Garden of Eden, Paradise, with resources given by God so that humans can not only survive but thrive (Lewinsohn, 1954). Perhaps this idea can be better illustrated with an image, Roland Savery’s “The Paradise”. Painted in 1626, the Dutch painters ’illustration of how Paradise would look like can arguably be the main theme of what this idea looked like, during the XVII century.

Figure 3. The Paradise, by Roelandt Savery (1626)

In this painting the cow is in the middle of paradise, and in the background, Adam and Eve, being seduced by the snake, in a nostalgic reminder of the day Eden was lost to humans. In the background, wild species of different continents, and surrounding the cow, other domesticated animals: goats, chickens, camels. In darkness, in the far-right corner, almost hidden, the dodo. In this painting, Savery places cattle in the middle of paradise, as the point where all attention goes to. And in the corner, the dodo, arguably the most widely known case of humans’ ability to extinguish non-human species. The landscape drawn by Savery is very useful, for it shows how artists and aristocracy, like the King of Spain, thought of the landscape in America. The religious themes are clearly defined by Adam and Eve’s presence in the background, and what non-human species were important or not are also clear: domestic species are at the center of interest. These images and thoughts have stayed in Western philosophy’s thought, and have continuously impacted our views on nature and non-human animals, plants, and the landscape (Merchant, 2013). In the case of New Spain and the region that I have studied, perhaps the painting would have looked more like the following:

Figure 4. A cow in a hacienda in Veracruz. 1778-11-05 (known). Dibujo de una vaca sin pelo y de piel vistosa, con su cría, nacida en una hacienda de Veracruz.

The cow and its heifer, alone in the landscape, dominating the view, being the only focus on it. The picture, in comparison with that of Savery, is far simpler and the idea portrayed can be that of the dominating and encapsulating presence of cattle over the land, with only grass under their hooves. No humans or other species around, only a cow and their descendant. There are no tunas or magueys, no corn or indigenous people, as the documents described the landscape. Instead, the land is flat and empty of other species, with the human being clearly absent of the picture, in contrast to the previous image by Savery. Perhaps the pictures, despite being drawn by two different artists, reflect instead the situation cattle finds itself in two different times. First, as they arrive in the American continent, represented in the picture of Savery; and second, a picture after cattle has been in the landscape for a long time, represented by the picture of the cow and its heifer in the landscape of Veracruz. However, the dominance of cattle has not only been present in art and in the ideas of Spanish explorers and religion, but it has also impacted how academics think of non-human animals. This is worth exploring, for it reveals an idea that has perhaps pervaded our thought even until today: that European domesticated species are superior.

European domestic animals are superior The idea of European domestic animals being superior, and particularly cattle, has pervaded scholarly works on the environment of the American continent. Since the XVI century, the thought that cattle represents civilisation and wealth has been a constant part of Modernity (Velten, 2007). Cattle representing civilisation, with its ideas, people, norms, practices, technologies, science, religion, is deemed to be superior to all other ideas, people, norms, practices, technologies, science and religion of the New World. The idea is so pervasive that it can still be found in current works, where the capacity of indigenous people to domesticate

63 animals and the complexity of this process are deemed as secondary, when compared to that of the Europeans. Crosby (1972), who arguably started the field of environmental history, falls into this assumption by following, as references, that which writers of the colonial times thought. Their logic was that indigenous people were not that good at domesticating, which implies that they are closer to nature, which means that they are further away from civilisation. Civilisation implies superiority, control, reason; nature implies inferiority, chaos, wilderness. The wording of Crosby’s The Columbian Exchange makes clear the way in which the author thinks of non- human species. He calls domesticated animals as “animal servants” and praises the indigenous people’s ability to farm but their unimpressive skill at domesticating animals. Curiously and contradicting his own view, he mentions seven species of animals (“dogs, two kinds of South American camel (the llama and alpaca), the guinea pig, and several kinds of fowl (the turkey, the Muscovy duck, and possibly, a type of chicken)) (Crosby, 1972, p. 128). That indigenous people had at least domesticated those species shows that they did, in fact, domesticated several animals. Perhaps their “unimpressive” attitude refers more to indigenous people not necessarily making them their “animal servants”, as Crosby calls them, but partners or co- habitants. A more equal relation between non-human species might have been present in indigenous peoples ’lives, and in that sense, they were very different to the European settlers. In another case, Anderson (2006), who tries to take the perspective of domesticated animals, also falls into the trap of assuming that indigenous people were not “good” at domesticating. This is not surprising, considering that the citations to support the thesis is Crosby himself, and Diamond (1997), who also cites Crosby when speaking of the history of domesticated animals in the American continent. Anderson is more careful in her approach and explains that indigenous peoples“ ’limits” to domestication were not due to incapacity, but that there were no incentives to do so: any sort of food supply for their diet could be found in game or in cultivated crops, and the animals that were around the area were not big enough in order to be domesticated, in comparison with those that are found in Europe. Following Anderson (2006), the author brings up the issue of size in animals, and implies that animals that are not that big (like cattle) are not worth domesticating, even though the indigenous people had in fact domesticated several others. Not being able to domesticate bigger animals is a limit, according to Anderson, to indigenous people. However, it is not acknowledged that the domestication of other species by indigenous people, regardless of their size, is just as important and analytically interesting as analysing the way Europeans domesticated cattle and other species. Regardless of size, indigenous people did in fact have relations with other non-human species, although probably different to that which the Europeans had with their own. These ideas helped to sustain the importance of European nature, of the intrinsic value their domestication had in comparison to the one indigenous people did, which in turn leads to the idea that cattle’s activities are not problematised: wherever cattle is found, it is because civilised, advanced people have reached this land. The existence of cattle and their roaming is proof of the magnificence of the European civilisation, of how advanced men in the continent are, and how in comparison, other peoples’ domestication are less important. If they were equals, or even superior, how come they did not domesticate beasts such as cattle, horses, created hybrids such as mules, and used the wool of sheep and the meat of pigs in order to sustain their life? Such is the reasoning behind the superiority of European animals, and Crosby, the source of Anderson and Diamond’s analysis, bases his assumptions on the accounts of priests, scribes and settlers in the XVI and XVII centuries. Their ideas pervaded, 64 and we find ourselves in the predicament where scholarly articles, books and knowledge is being produced with the biases and misconceptions that Spanish newcomers had 500 years ago. With this said, it is important to keep in mind that I study cattle, in the current thesis, because it is an actor that holds on its own the key to understand the modifications to the landscape of the New Spain. Any sort of bias towards their “superiority”, as the previous authors did, is not pretended. Instead, I speak of the strong connections that cattle had with actors in the landscape, which is not to be confused with being “on top”. It instead reflects the agenting ability of cattle, and how it related to the landscape and the dwellers on it. Following this idea, it is now time to draw back focus to how cattle related and interacted. Agency, in the upcoming section, will take the center stage as I analyse cattle’s movements and provocations in the landscape of the New Spain.

Crop robbers: modifying the land by eating and walking One of the main ways in which cattle acts is by eating. Cattle moved around the landscape and dominated it, as I have shown throughout the thesis, by eating what grew on the landscape. Two actions that are part of cattle’s existence and which are necessary for its survival, moving and eating, became two forces that modified the landscape. In order to analyse and see, in- depth, how cattle disrupted the lives of indigenous people by eating their crops, I coded the instances where cattle were mentioned to be the causes of damage, in some way, to indigenous people. I separated the damage in two different codes: 1. Direct damages caused by cattle, where I grouped the instances where cattle did damage by its own actions (walking, eating, attacking) 2. Indirect damages, where the cause of the damage are associated species to cattle, like other livestock or humans. The direct damages caused by cattle can be directly named, for every document analysed mentioned how such damage was done. The oldest reference to the damages that I could analyse is from 155039, where the King states as the reason for his Real Cédula: My president oidores of the Real Audiencia de la Nueva España due to many petitions in my Council of the Indies which have been presented in the estancias it has been told to us many times that the cattle ranches of cow livestock mares pigs and other minor livestock thus make damage in the corn fields of the native indigenous of this land and especially the cattle that goes unruly which cannot be fenced to which cause the abovementioned indigenous people suffer great labours […] (Consejo de Indias (España) and Carlos I of Spain and V of the Holy Roman Empire, 1550) Cattle are here described, alongside other livestock, as being responsible for the damages done to corn fields of indigenous people, walking around “unruly”, which probably means they were roaming freely. As explained in previous chapters, cattle were disrupting ecological networks and causing deep changes in the landscape and the activities in it. The descriptions furthermore match the explanations by Sluyter (1996), who speaks of free ranging husbandry in the New Spain during the XVI century and in the beginning of the XVII century. The quote by the King

39 1550-03-24 (known), Valladolid. Real Cédula a la Audiencia de México para que provean que las estancias ganaderas se concedan donde no puedan provocar daño a los indios y si se hubiesen de dar, que estén apartadas de los pueblos de los indios para que los ganados no hagan daño a sus maizales y sementeras. 65 and the description of cattle as “unruly” are confirmed by other authors (Velten, 2007), who talks of wild cattle taking over the plains and lands of what is nowadays Texas (before, the New Spain). According to the author, these wild cattle stayed roaming freely until the XIX century, when industrialised ways of cattle ranching were introduced to accelerate the production of meat. Other accounts of the actions of cattle can be found in the next Cédulas that the Kings issued40, and which I have analysed in previous chapters, and it was furthermore instructed to the Viceroys that came to lead the Viceroyalty about the damage that the cattle were causing to indigenous people’s land, and how this situation needed to be handled. The indirect damages are those that were not caused by cattle and its actions, but by associated species that came together with cattle. These include humans, as well as other livestock such as sheep, pigs and chickens that, it seems, wandered and came together with cattle. In the case of humans, the actions surrounded cattle husbandry but were not directly performed by cattle. In previous chapters I have explained such damages, for example, when Spanish settlers seized land either by marrying indigenous women, or by taking the land left by indigenous people when cattle ate their crops. In regards to this process as an “indirect damage”, I have mentioned in previous chapters a fragment where it is specified that the above-mentioned land-grabbing was carried out by different species: I have been given account that many Spanish who have bought land to the natives and others that have married in that land with color of the lands and possessions that have come with their women or bought want to populate them with numerous livestock oxen horses sheep goats and pigs. Which is prejudicial to the natives […] The text, as I explored in a previous chapter, explains that Spanish settlers are marrying indigenous women in order to take their land and possessions, to fill them with cattle and other types of livestock. The taking of land, in this case, can arguably be called as an accompanying element to the taking of land by cattle, which was already happening even without the interference of humans. Cattle roamed the land, ate the crops and made indigenous people to move away from it. The Spanish settlers, in subsequent and posterior colonisation processes, took the land and made it theirs, titling them in their own documents and with their own logic. Mules are also mentioned in the texts. They could be called an accompanying species, which like cattle also roamed around the land and were part of a system of transport. The damage caused by them, as well as by other species like pigs (Crosby, 2003) and sheep (Melville, 1994), was the consequence of the associations between these species, who acted together and constructed a network that, combined with the previous meaning construction processes and ideas that circulated around the time, was to be modified for the benefit of livestock and Spanish settlers. A landscape where the music of the taskscape was the tune of cattle ranching, and not of any other activity. My own study here can be compared with Armstrong (2018), who analyses the behaviour of sheep and how their ways of remembering, eating, walking, and the shape of their hooves, modified the landscape of New Zealand hills. If the behaviour of cattle is viewed in this sense as an indicator of how they act in the landscape, as Armstrong (2018) did with sheep and their memory, I would call cattle as crop-robbers. Crop-robbing, I argue, is their way of interacting with the landscape and with the dwellers on it. I am inspired to call them so by Zeuner (1963),

40 1568-06-07, Aranjuez. Instrucción de gobierno a Martín Enríquez, virrey de Nueva España y presidente de la Audiencia de México; 1589-07-19 , San Lorenzo. Instrucción de gobierno a Luis de Velasco [y Castilla], virrey de Nueva España y presidente de la Audiencia de México. 66 who uses the term to describe the animals that were domesticated during the early agricultural phase, and which also include the buffalo, yak, banteng, and the pig. The term is particularly reminiscent of what cattle did in the American continent as soon as it arrived. Agriculture, as Zeuner puts it, was one of the elements that allowed certain non-human animals, like cattle, to be domesticated. They started as “crop-robbers”, but were in time domesticated (Zeuner, 1963, p. 199). The ethea of cattle, from this point of view, is in this landscape a way of taking the land and destroying the ethea of indigenous people, as well as other species like corn, tunas, and magueys. In a sense, the actions done by cattle for millennia, and their attraction to cultivated lands, came together in the American landscape to produce the displacement of indigenous people, the destruction of their cultivated lands, the taking of land by Spanish settlers, resulting later on in the the disappearance of cultures and societies that used to thrive in this landscape. Cattle ranching, land-grabbing, meat production, carriages and commerce from the ports and cities of the New Spain towards the metropolis in Spain are now the taskscape of the area. It is in this situation where the landscape, agency and power are confirmed as verbs and not as nouns (Mitchell, 2002, p. 3; Despret, 2013; Foucault, 1978, p. 92-94).

Conclusion

Throughout this thesis, I have aimed at answering one main question: What role did cattle play in the process of landscape change in the American continent? In order to answer that question, I focused on 12 documents issued around the subject of cattle and the damage that was being caused to indigenous peoples ’crops in the Viceroyalty of New Spain. In a sense, the thesis was a case study, which helps to illustrate the presence of cattle all over the American continent and how it happened. In order to answer my research question, I wrote some sub- questions that helped pinpoint what I was looking for: 1. How is the network between cattle and other species described in the sources? 2. How was the network of human-animal relations after the arrival of cattle into the American continent? 3. What meanings were formed in the network following the arrival of cattle in the American continent? Each one of these questions served to highlight one aspect of the process of landscape modification. At the same time, they helped me to separate my thoughts and compartmentalise what I would be looking for in each document. The thesis places itself in the effort that Armstrong (2002) says should be at the forefront of Animal Studies: to create detailed accounts of how non-human animals have influenced their environment and created change. It is in this field were I place this writing. In this same context, I bring about questions on the American continent, or at least, the Spanish and Portuguese speaking part of it, whose place in Animal Studies has not been deeply filled and which deserves, from my point of view, more research. As this thesis has shown, the information available is vast, and more and more analysis with non-human animals in the center of analysis should be done in order to give a more detailed account of what happened during those years. The theoretical framework of the thesis included Animal Studies, Actor Network Theory, and concepts like Landscape, Agency and Power. Methodologically, archival research methods were used in order to get and analyse information from the Archivo General de Indias. The use of these theoretical frameworks and concepts on the empirical data provided insights into the modification of the landscape by non-human animals, like cattle. On the first hand, my analysis has shown that cattle were effectively a key part in the modification of the landscape in the Viceroyalty of New Spain (nowadays Mexico). These changes were the result of networks of actors that provoked, incited, and acted in diverse ways, exercising agency by relating to each other and provoking changes in the landscape. Cattle, as I have explored throughout the thesis, was one of the most connected actors in the network, effectively influencing the actions of human actors like indigenous people and Spanish settlers. Moreover, cattle influenced the way indigenous people dwelled in the landscape. One of their main activities, agriculture, was disrupted by the presence of cattle and other livestock, who ate their crops and destroyed their attempts at growing food. The plants that were used by indigenous people, like corn, maguey, and tunas, were also affected by the presence of cattle, and their growth and overall dwelling in the landscape, as plants, was diminished.

Cattle also influenced indigenous people by forcing them to move. This information can be confirmed by the descriptions given by the King of Spain in several occasions, who explains how indigenous people have moved away from the land due to the damage that cattle was causing to their livelihoods. The presence of cattle was so strong that even indigenous people’s homes were affected directed by cattle, who also came inside their houses. Other conclusions that can be drawn from my text have to do with the network of alliances between actors. Cattle was allied with Spanish settlers, for example, and this alliance resulted in favour of the Spanish settlers in the form of abandoned lands and weakened indigenous communities, who could not resist to the presence of these two actors. Finally, ideas that circulated during this time were also connected to cattle in the New Spain. The landscape, and in general the American continent, were seen as a Garden of Eden, a paradise, abundant and filled with resources for European humans. Plants and other non-human animals found in the American continent were there to be used and taken, as well as the human inhabitants. In the end of the last chapter, I proposed a concept that could summarise my analysis. I have called this concept Cowlonialism, and with it, I would like to finish this thesis. Cowlonialism implies the existence of a regime of ideas, that was accompanied by practices and activities performed by cattle. The concept of Cowlonialism implies, by its existence, that it is different than Colonialism. Colonialism is a human process; Cowlonialism is a more- than-human process. Cattle are agenting, in Cowlonialism, modifying and acting on the world around them and their own existence. Cattle, in my analysis, are not mere tools or commodities: they are in a network, supported and supporting ideas and other actors, making up what was to become the landscape of the New Spain, nowadays Mexico. In this sense, my analysis contrasts with the conceptualisations and proposals of previously mentioned authors like Sluyter (1996), Crosby (1972) and Anderson (2006), who place humans in the centre of their analysis. In my analysis, in contrast, cattle are at the center of the inquiry. Cowlonisation is the process by which the cow, as an animal, takes up the land and invades it. From an ecological point of view, it resembles the concepts used in natural sciences to speak of animals who do not have a natural predator, who could roam free in the American continent and disrupting the ecological networks previously established in the landscape. However, my analysis goes beyond this ecological, disciplinary concept, and delves instead in the way that meaning was constructed in the landscape and how, in that way, cattle modified the network of meanings in the New Spain. In the text, I present a framework by which the modifications of non-human species can be traced throughout a landscape. As I delve into the construction of meaning, I define Cowlonisation as a regime of ideas that defines a way of acting and agenting that in the New Spain took the form of robbing crops, displacing indigenous people, taking the land, and replacing their agricultural activities with cattle ranching. In order to explain Cowlonialism, I outlined in detail the activities and practices used. To do this, I drew from Actor-Network Theory, Foucault’s conceptualisation of power and even from Armstrong (2002), who unanimously suggest that analysis on networks, how power is exercised and the modifications of landscapes by non-human animals, respectively, need to be detailed and rigorous, including what actors were involved, and when it happened. In that sense, the analysis done throughout the thesis is a snapshot of Cowlonisation seen through the lens of the 12 documents that I could analyse from the Archivo General de Indias. Following with this idea, the finding of these documents and the continuous presence of cattle in each one of them, serves as the basis for the description of the network and, in turn, a detailed account of the exercise of agency by cattle in the New Spain. Uncovering Cowlonialism required to trace cattle’s actions, as well as tracing the intersections of these actions with ideas that were circulating during that time, from meanings surrounding nature, 69 to other constructions related to how the landscape, work, culture and even food are thought, embedded in different historical processes and ideas that were roaming the Spanish Empire during the XVI century. I must be clear and explain that the concept of Cowlonialism is a proposal, a way of re-defining traditional concepts like Colonialism into more nuanced, context-specific concepts, that prescind of the pretension of universality and instead focus on how particular arrangements in a network allowed species, in this case cattle, to create a regime of ideas and relations where other species were subjugated under them and other livestock, as well as Spanish humans. If the concept were to be used in other contexts, it needs to be based on detailed and rigorous descriptions, conscious of the context, the time and the sources. My proposal can be a basis for analysis that can inspire other researchers to create stories of animals where the non-human species can exercise their agency completely, not only as exploited, but also as subjugators. Cowlonialism did happen in the New Spain, I argue, but my current analysis does not allow me to say the same about the entire world. Perhaps, it takes different forms depending on where cattle are. The strength of the concept of Cowlonialism is that it allows to analyse non- human animals that have moved to new landscapes, regardless of the conditions of their displacement, seeing the consequences that their presence can have in the landscape and the taskscape, in species of animals and humans. Could there be a regime of ideas where other species, like rabbits subjugate a particular landscape in, for example, Australia? The idea is interesting and perhaps yes, but the argumentation needs to be based on the tracing of the relations between rabbits and every other species and activity in the landscape. The possibilities are nevertheless open for other studies that can shed light on the way other non- human animals can exercise power, agency, and create landscapes. To finish this thesis, I would like to reflect on how cattle and human beings have related up to this point in time. Cattle and their human counterparts have effectively worked together for thousands of years. For the most part, wherever cattle were, humans were too. Cattle and humans came with sheep, dogs, horses, mules, chickens and ticks, and they all worked together and formed networks that spanned even the most minuscules of microbes. If cattle were found, let there be sure that viruses, bacteria and other small non-human species were also present. Where cattle were, even more elemental particles, such as nitrogen, were found: their dung filled the ground with nutrients, serving to pave the way to plants and crops that could use that nitrogen to grow and thrive. But cattle have also been workers, exploited, hurt, and used to please their human counterparts, to serve them. It was not an idyllic relationship. They have been subdued to the Spanish humans, and in that sense, their existence was used to feed explorers. Cattle were left in islands, stranded from their homeland into strange parts. They had to make do and survive, and they did, only to be taken again when a new set of ships came to pick them up and be left stranded in another island, in another land, or in another continent. Those that did cooperate, those that made it until they arrived to the American continent found themselves in a land that presented many dangers, that presented new conditions to which they were unaccustomed and that put their lives in danger. Some found it good and realised that they could feed and survive on the different vegetables and legumes that were found in this new land. They were almost free to walk away from their human counterparts, meeting new humans, new plants, new lands, new waters, new horizons. Cattle, in America, were free and they did as they wanted. They wandered in cities by the thousands and ran over what they wanted. They went up north and formed herds and looked for food and reproduced and co-became with other the species in the continent. Cattle had been silent, but in the American continent, they could stomp, walk, eat, reproduce and live as they saw fit.

Perhaps this story of how cattle acted and how their actions influenced the world frees them from the biological determinism that implies saying that cattle have an essence, one that cannot be understood by humans but which is there, a nature inside of them, that makes them who they are.: docile, domesticated. But this idea of an inner nature is also a construction: cows change and adapt, sometimes they are gentle and calm and sometimes they are feral and do not want other species next to them. Sometimes they like having human beings next to them, sometimes not. From this point, I argue that there is no “cattle nature” that obliged them to act as they did in the American continent. To say so would be to agree that cattle are innocent, in the Christian sense, that they act as they do just because they were made to be so, by God, and that their existence is justified precisely on that. To say this would be to affirm that there is an inner nature to beings, that they have an inner essence that makes them who they are and that does not change and is immutable. No. Cattle became who they were due to the connections, links and filaments that they formed with other actors in that particular context. Thousands of years of exploitation, combined with ideas on nature and the innocence of non-human animals, plus the exploration and exploitation of other lands by European humans, resulted in cattle running free, eating crops, becoming feral, taking land and displacing indigenous people in the American continent. Cowlonialism is, in the end, a regime of ideas that happens in the landscapes of the New Spain, as a result of the interactions between ideas and actors. A regime where cattle act, sometimes with human companions. But most of the time, cattle just ate, walked, grazed, stomped, shat, breathed, farted, killed, and bred. Cattle, in this network, ruled.

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Archive sources Consejo de Indias (España) and Carlos I of Spain and V of the Holy Roman Empire, 1528. Real Cédula al Gobernador o juez de residencia de la Isla de San Juan para que se informen si es cierto como dice Diego Muriel, vecino de dicha Isla y encargado de los indios que hay en una hacienda de la ribera de Toa, que en dicha hacienda se entrometen personas que llevan allí sus ganados, contraviniendo las ordenanzas de dicha Isla, y causando perjuicio a la citada hacienda; por lo que pide, que le señalen a esta hacienda de la ribera de Toa, una legua en derredor que le sirva de era para sus ganados, no pudiendo entrar ningunos otros en ella, y envíen dicha información al Consejo de Indias. Available at: [Accessed 2 Apr. 2020]. Consejo de Indias (España) and Carlos I of Spain and V of the Holy Roman Empire, 1538. Real cédula a la Audiencia de México para que haga justicia en la solicitud de Doña Isabel, hija de Moctezuma, que se queja de que el marqués del Valle y otras personas han hecho en tierra de los indios, pueblo de Tacuba, cuya encomienda ella tiene, ciertos molinos en los cuales tienen gallinas y puercos y bueyes y caballos que comen las sementeras de los dichos indios de que reciban mucho daño, por lo que suplica se mande que en los dichos molinos no hubiesen las dichas gallinas ni puercos ni bueyes ni caballos sueltos. Available at: [Accessed 2 Apr. 2020]. Consejo de Indias (España) and Carlos I of Spain and V of the Holy Roman Empire, 1550. Real Cédula a la Audiencia de México para que provean que las estancias ganaderas se concedan donde no puedan provocar daño a los indios y si se hubiesen de dar, que estén apartadas de los pueblos de los indios para que los ganados no hagan daño a sus maizales y sementeras. Available at: [Accessed 2 Apr. 2020]. Consejo de Indias (España) and Felipe II of Spain, 1568. Instrucción de gobierno a Martín Enríquez, virrey de Nueva España y presidente de la Audiencia de México. Archivo General de Indias, Registros de oficio y partes: Nueva España, Registros de oficio y partes, Audiencia de México, Gobierno. Available at: [Accessed 2 Apr. 2020]. Consejo de Indias (España) and Felipe II of Spain, 1576. Real cédula al virrey de Nueva España para que haga disponga lo que considere acerca delo que pide Juan Velázquez de Salazar en nombre de la ciudad de Los Ángeles [Puebla], sobre el agostadero de sus ganados, sin perjuicio de las sementeras y de los indios. Available at: [Accessed 2 Apr. 2020]. Consejo de Indias (España) and Felipe II of Spain, 1585a. Real cédula a al virrey de Nueva España y la Audiencia de México para que vean las ordenanzas que han de hacer los indios principales de la provincia de Tlaxcala, con el fin de que sus sementeras y granjerías no reciban daño de los bueyes y mulas de las carretas que pasan por ellas. Available at: [Accessed 2 Apr. 2020]. Consejo de Indias (España) and Felipe II of Spain, 1585b. Real cédula a la Audiencia de México para que provea sobre lo que piden los indios de Tlaxcala, de que los proveedores de las carnicerías de la ciudad no lleven allí más ganado del necesario, ya que aprovechan para engordarlo en sus sementeras. Available at: [Accessed 2 Apr. 2020]. Consejo de Indias (España) and Felipe II of Spain, 1585c. Real cédula a la Audiencia de México para que vea sobre lo que piden los indios de Tlaxcala, de que se cambien las mojoneras y se derriben las casas en las estancias y caballerías que se hubiesen tomado sin licencia. Available at: [Accessed 2 Apr. 2020]. Consejo de Indias (España) and Felipe II of Spain, 1585d. Real cédula al virrey de Nueva España para que provea lo que sea más conveniente sobre el daño que reciben en sus sementeras y granjerías los indios de Jilotepec por parte de los mestizos, mulatos y negros que van en guarda de sus ganados. Available at: 74

[Accessed 2 Apr. 2020]. Consejo de Indias (España) and Felipe II of Spain, 1585e. Real cédula al virrey de Nueva España y la Audiencia de México para que vean las ordenanzas que han de hacer los indios de Tlaxcala sobre la proliferación de ganados en aquellas tierras. Available at: [Accessed 2 Apr. 2020]. Consejo de Indias (España) and Felipe II of Spain, 1585f. Real cédula al virrey y Audiencia de México para que a petición de Antonio de Guevara, Pedro de Torres, Diego Téllez y Zacarías de Santiago, caciques de Tlaxcala y de Diego Muñoz Camargo, su intérprete, provean lo más conveniente sobre las ordenanzas sobre agostaderos para que no reciban agravio metiendo el ganado en sus tierras hasta haber cogido sus legumbres. Available at: [Accessed 2 Apr. 2020]. Consejo de Indias (España) and Felipe II of Spain, 1586. Real cédula al Marqués de Villamanrique, virrey de Nueva España, ordenándole examinar la petición de los naturales de los pueblos de ‘Chachalentlán’ y ‘Coabitlán’ y sus sujetos, así como de otros, acerca de que no se permitiera a los oficiales, secretarios y ministros de justicia tener ganados, estancias ni granjerías, de lo que se derivaban daños para los indios, y que proveyera lo que conviniera, de manera que los naturales no recibieran más daño. Available at: [Accessed 2 Apr. 2020]. Consejo de Indias (España) and Felipe II of Spain, 1589. Instrucción de gobierno a Luis de Velasco [y Castilla], virrey de Nueva España y presidente de la Audiencia de México. Archivo General de Indias, Registros de oficio y partes: Nueva España, Registros de oficio y partes, Audiencia de México, Gobierno. Available at: [Accessed 2 Apr. 2020]. Consejo de Indias (España) and Felipe III of Spain, 1602. Real cédula al virrey de Nueva España y la Audiencia de México para que hagan justicia breve y sumariamente sobre lo que piden los indios de la ciudad y provincia de Texcoco de no recibir daño ni agravio en sus sementeras por la abundancia de bueyes, caballos, mulas y otros ganados menores que se las comen y destruyen. Available at: . Consejo de Indias. 1778. Dibujo de una vaca sin pelo y de piel vistosa, con su cría, nacida en una hacienda de Veracruz. Available at: .

Appendices

I. Transcribed documents with descriptive codes, in chronological order

sirve de otros muchos Indios y pueblos y estancias q no tiene titulo dellos lo qual se podia verificar manidance e Xsiviese la cedula Juez tenia me fue suplicado my Xdad mandase poner los Indios tubiese sin buen titulo en na Tabeca mandand q no fiscal q en Reside a sitienedello o amogami mio fuese lo qual vita por los delrio y delas Indias fue a apodace q tenia mandar dar esta mi cedula sea vos eydoneco por bien por vos mance veays losuso os yllamadas eoydas las partes a quien xtare pareis enello qteriylrene pomplinz dezns LC y deis orden aumo El fiscal q en essa audiencia Preside asista a la dicha Causa ens fazades en deaporalgua manera fecha q la Villa d Cvalqd aveyntey y tiel dias del mes demoa de myl el qms tangita anos mayre desaman señalada delma en el velazR sey tiez Sandoval Vila deneypa bzuyta El Rey

Deoffu Mio presidente oydores de la Audiencia Sobre como sean de dar Real de la nueva spaña por muchas peticiones las estancias en el mio Co de las Indias sean presentado en las estancias Diversas vezes senos ha hecho Relon las estancias delos ganados bacunos yieguas Damage done by cows and puercous e otros ganados menores entonces fazen associated species to crops of gazona daño en los mayzales de los Indios Naturales indigenous people dessa tira yespmte del vacuno q anda desmandado q no se puedeguardar aquya qausa Cows roaming freely cause damage los dichos Indios pasan grand trabajo y por timi vey conviene q ya se Remedie X sinance The situation caused by the animals needs to be addressed by officials Tengais muy gran d myzay d no seden Estancias algunas en partes lugares de q pueden subceder los dichos dapnos Cattle ranches must far be away from 78 indigenous land

e quando se viesen de dar estancias sean apartadas delos pueblos de los Indios e qe sus sementeras q no se puedan seguir los dichos danos pue qa los ganados sepodran señalar Not completely tras apartadas e yermas donde puedan andar understandable. y pasear eno fazan los dichos danos y por q dicho desto sean des querellas cada dia queerla eys luego auno o arsa q tanto inporta y psuzarey q ayatantas guardas y pasazes con los ganados vasten za lo guardar aumo nofazen doris equana alguno daño subcediere lo castigueyz y hagayz las Damage is to be paid by the tigar y pagar adn Dueño el daño q oviere owner of the cattle

Rescuido y enbiarnos leys Relon con brevedad Report back to the King. delo q en e dorseeq uzier y queyeredes desta en la villa de Vale X veyntey qui dias delmes de marza de myl e qmSu tanqita anos maxne Refrendada desamano señalada del mar q gaze ve laz R guey Lopez Somavae Riba veneyra buyca

El Rey

1568-06-07, Aranjuez. Instrucción de gobierno a Martín Enríquez, virrey de Nueva España y presidente de la Audiencia de México. Reference code: ES.41091.AGI/23//MEXICO,1089,L.5,F.194V-209V. tierras donde hagan loc yngenios y planten las canas las que parecieze ser convenien tec paraello con q sea sin ningun perjui zio deloc yndioc y ande entender q ande tener negros para ser vicio de suic yngenioc sin q en ello entiendan yndios so qzabel enac

tiosy por q somoc ynformadoc q mu 19 chac de lac estanciae y panadosoc españolee estan en perjuizio de loc yndioc gdoz Damage done by cows to the estar ensuc tierrac o muy cerca de suc crops of indigenous people labrancac y haziendac acyvacavsa loc dhoc ganadoc les comen y destruyen sue sementerac y lec hazen o tiocdaños e para Remedio del to yzovercio q l oidor q fuere a visitar una delac prin cipalec cosac q ccvcacazgo sea vicitar lac dhac estanciac sin ser zzquerido q The oidor must visit the land vez si estan en su perjuizio o en suc tierrac of the Spanish and see that it y lac q haccaze estar en Su perjuizio o en is not affecting the indigenous suc tierrac de su oficio lac mande luego people’s land quitar y pasar a otra parte q sean bal dioc sin perJuizio de nadie puec por la vondad de dios la tierra ce tan larga y tangzand los unos y loc otroc podan bien caber sin hazerse dano lo qual hara claho oidor llamadac y oidas las partes a quien tuvieze.

20 Y somos ynformadoc q algunac delas Cattle ranches occupy etiae estanciae deganadoc estan y ocupan irrigation land algas tierrac d regadio muy buenae para snbrar trigo y siaccio noce tubiesen las dichae estanciae loc dhoc Indigenous people yndios senbrarian laes dhac tierrac growing wheat loc trigo de que vezena mucho bien

y Probceho Alarrepuca por q l tugo de Irrigation wheat is Regadio nose yela y el q se cogesin good regarse dhoc la mayor parte recibe

daño deloc y loc y Por ecta cavsa algas be Lack of bread zec dizen q ay falta de Pan en la nue ba españa q ozende ynformados sic de tudac lac tierrac de regadioc vie Irrigation land must be o viera y dareic orden Como se sienbren used for growing crops de trigo y si algas ynstancias de ganadoc 80

crecen o bieze que no tengan titulo legitimo a lac tierrac mandar lac zic Land to be given where no damage can be done que taidellac y gabar aotrac partec donde ecten sin perJuizio y dareic orden con loc yndioc como en tudac lac otrac tierrac de rregadio siembren trigo por Order the indigenous people to grow food la tierra sea muy bien vadtecida y si tubieren alguna titulo llamadac yoidac las partec haeic en ello Jucticia

21 Aio sy para seguridad y Pobla cion de la tierra ynformazoc Eic en q partec y lugarec de la dha Nueva ec paña con bezna hazer y hedificar algunoc puebloc despañolec y dho cuzarcio de saber d algo buenoc sitioc q provereic cerca dello lo q vieredel q mac conviene q sea sin perJuizio ny Dexaon alga de loc yn dioc va visarnos Sic de lo q cerca dello hizieredel

22 Y porqaca se a tenido Relaon q la ciudad de la Veracruz es mal Sana yasi muchos de loc que de aca Van a la Nueva España y de alla vienen aenbarcarse y elipsan en suc vidac d oi de tenerse enella mac de lo

por noguerey los Yndios yenergnangenios decvian lac dcaelauce siendo de onnatural enemigos del trabajo np cuando nos fuesemosservid demandar quacos yndios della Cava del alccala y yo Cuca tepeaca grajuanjo guavatunyan santrajo totopia guacan q Joness malcomarcanos fueren conpadeiros a criar y traen ala hacindad lae, aenacez demac cosae Fuesen nacaos anire Pa los fermos pagandolee por ello lo que fuera que a lo qual demac dofer Cede mostro aprovahamto leennepaberian muy bien adha acomolama md fuese esa viendo sevisto poreos derro Consejo dellae indiae fusacordado quadeviamos mandar dar estancia a Paravos Porsaquasosmas veaic lo que la dha ciudad pida y ve mando atencion asequadasamos los naturales desas tiarrae sean reservados de subjecion y muy bientratados convease lo queopana aexe convanir como agujan Istienapriessts os lo Revontinos fecha en Madrid a veinte del febo de 1826 do El Rey Refrenda de Anto dberal senalada delos dae

El Rey

La ciudad de los angeles Nuestro virrey preste e oydores de La mia audiencia Real quarresidencia ciudad de Mexico de la nuebaespaña Juo basquez desalacaz procurador general desatierra en ne de la ciudad de Losan geles ella nos ha hecho Relacion Los vezinos de la dicha People have too little ciudad tienen muy pequeñas estancias para suc gana land for their sheep dos obejunos y las que ay muy frias y de muchos yelos en el valle se escunua y otras partes acuya causa les ce forcoso ena There is more land cavandoselospastos que duran poco tiempo salir los agostaderos that they can use that y nosbarzante que por toda la comarca ay muchos altos sierras y does not affect the baldios donde pueden agostar imperjuycio delas semen indigenous crops teras por ser las ordenancas que sobre esto ay y leyas muy son judiciales y Reguzasal y aunque teman gran necesidad y ay tanta comodidad sin perjuycio delasdchas sementeras Sheep owners do not no osan salir aunque se mueran los ganados y si salen son dare to go out of their muy molestados y persegidos y los juezes les lleban excesibac land and are being pursued by judges penas sin haver procedido daño alguno y que la molestia 82

y dexacion de los criadores es grande y muy ordinaria splicandonos les diesemos licencia para que los ganados menores Request that the minor cattle is Agostasen libremte por los dchos altos sierras y baldios allowed to roam in the land that does not have crops que no estubiesen senbrados y que si bajasen ahaser dano en lose Any damage by the animals will brado fuesenpenados y lo pagasen con mucha ventaja y q be paid by the owners que pudiesen salir delac estanciae alosagostaderos enfin del mes de otubre y bolver a salir a ellos en todo el mes dea To be allowed to take the animals to these lands from bril con lo qual se Remediarian todos estos daños o como October to April la Nia nno fuese y habiendosebisto Lmo conse jo de las yndias fue acordado que deviamosmandar dar esta mia cedula para bor por la qual os mandamos q bisto lo que pide la dcha ciudad d. probeays como quientiene Request to the Audiencia lacossa presente lo que pareciere conventi de manera q to proceed as necessary que los yndios mostotezceso no Reciba agravio y cesen without damage to the y se escusen las molestias que Reciben los dchos vezinos indigenous people ferda en md Aveyntedefebrero de millyquie y setenta y seis anos yo el Rey Resiendada de anto de eraso y senalada de los del Consejo

1585-02-15 , Daroca. Real cédula al virrey de Nueva España para que provea lo que sea más conveniente sobre el daño que reciben en sus sementeras y granjerías los indios de Jilotepec por parte de los mestizos, mulatos y negros que van en guarda de sus ganados. Reference code: ES.41091.AGI/23//MEXICO,1091,L.11,F.73V-74R.

dios cada semana de que con los multiplicos de los dhos ganados, trigo y mayz ptias semillas puesnella se cogen se sustenta mucha y arse de la nueva españa fuese servidos de mandar que los dhos quatrocientos Indios que asiean fue ra delas tra y provincia sean reservados deel dho servyo o como la mirnrd fuese y saviendose visto y a los demi q delos Indios he acordado lo remitir para quelo veays y bien in formados de lo que enello passa y combiene proveer proveays lo que convenga y asvisas mando lo hagayis no permitiendo que en ma nera alguna los dhos indios rescivan agravio ni dexacion y de loqueenello hiziesedes me avisareys, fecha en darola aquinze defe brero de millyqui y ochentaycinco anos yo El Rey Resiendada de Antonio de Eraso y señalada del Consejo

El Rey Los dhos Indios Mi Virrey del lanueva españa o Cuperile a el Virrey de la Na a personas a cuyo cargo fuere el Govierno Espa a el Virrey de la Na Espa ga sobre los Indios della por parrte de los Indios de la prova de dela Prova de Xilote trovda lo que conven Xilotepec desta Tierra se me ha hecho Rela pec deaquellas tra cion queenella ay muchas estancias dega dizen haver recivido ganados mayores y puede alguno anos aesta ciertos daños Iv parte los dueños dellas hiendo contra lo sementeras de los questa proviezda los sacan de las dhas estan ganados mayores cias y los llevan a muchos pueblos y partes quealli ay en algu de la dha provincia dondelostienen en Damage done by cows and nas estancias agostadero mucho tiempo lo qual los Vzos associated species to the y naturales della havian rescivido y rescivian crops of indigenous people notables daños enlas sementeras y grangerias y eran maltratados y veJados de los mesticos mulatos y negros q van enguarda delos The guards of the cattle dhos ganados Tomandolas y por fuerca sustia (black, mestizos) hurt and rape indigenous women tiendas mugeres y hijac suplicandome A tento a ello fuese servido de os mando embia sedesluego a la dha provincia lpazensa The Audiencia needs to qua conviniese que averiguase los danos research what goes on with asi hechos por los dhos ganados mayores que the cattle los cuidadores y duenos pulansido y sondellos Any damage by the animals will be paid les pagasen los dhos daños y assimismo pro by the owners hibiese el podermeser q la dha provincia en The land is not to be used for grazing. 84

ninguno tiempo del año el dho ganado para agostadero pues en ella haviade a dehario mas de setecientos mill cavecas delo menor Number of minor cattle in that region y lo uno Trelo stio no se podia conpadecer o como la mismo fuese e haviendose visto por los de mi Consejo de las Indias heacor dado de os lo remitir para que lo veays y beanzn formados delo que Todo ello apa Request to the Audiencia to proceed sado y pasa y conviene y proveer y proveays as necessary without damage to the lo que convenga y addios mando que quelo indigenous people hagays de manera que los VeZinos y naturales de la dha provincia no rescivan agravio ni vexacion y de lo que Lo hizienedes me avissareys fecha en daroca a quinze de fe brero de millyqui y ochentaycinco anos yo El Rey resiendada de Eraso y señalada del Qo Enladerete A. XXy de febrero de MdLCCCV anos se despacho ca deguond firmada de rimano y Refrendada de Anto de Eraso en que se manda al Virrey de la Nueva Espa que de tierrac y solarec a Alonsso de Moralec Vaa queellaTierra Otra para que el dicho ALo de Moralec puedallevar a aquella tierra Dos Espadac dos dagas Un Arcavuz Otra para que el Virrey delanuevaespaña Diego de molina y de padilla de tierras y solares a Diego de molina y de padilla que va a aquella tierra otra para que el diego pueda llevar a la nueva espa dos espadas dos dagas y un arcabu

No fuesen criados niallegados delos otros oidores ni de officialee, nimenitios deesami Real Audiencia porque con su favor y calor hazen grandee agravios que no se les ossan pedir y se quedan sin castigo que todo cessaria connombrarsse alguno de los Vessinos honrrados de la di cha ciudad de Tlaxcala o como la misma fuese ya viendose visto por los de mi Consso delae Indiae fue acordado que deviam dar dar esta mi cedula Porlaqualosmando y mucho encargo que en la Provicion de Los dichos officios tengaie gran cuenta y Cuydado con el Benefficio de los dichos Naturalee por lo mucho que oydores q sean bien tratados amparados y defen didos y quenoseleehaga agravio ni vexon hecha tenida a ocho de abril de Millquie y ochentaycinco años yo el Rey Por mandado de su Md Antonio de eraso señalada deeq

El Rey

Los Indios de Tlaxcala pre Mi Virrey Presite Oidoree de senten ciertas ordenancae q le mi real Audiencia que reside La se les manda hazer se el Poblar ciudad de Mexco de la Nueva Spa dejadas Las tierras de sus termios provean acercadellos lo q convenga

Don Antonio de guevara Governador de la Ciudad y provincia de Tlaxcala don Pedro de Torree don Diego TelleZ don Cacariae de Cto

Indios Principales y caciquee de lae quatro Caciques of the area cavecerae de la dicha ciudad y Provincia request to the King. y Diego Muñoz Camargo Interprete y ennombre della meanhechorelacion que muchos espanoles queancompradotierrae a los Natu ralee y otros queseancassado enaquellatierra Spanish people who have married indigenous people concolor de las tierrae y posesionee quean and have inherited the land avido con susmugeree o comprado Lae quie they had, want to populate ren poblar de cantidad de ganados Bueyee the land with cattle and Cavallos Ovejae Cabrae y Puercos. Lo other associated species. quales perjuicio de los dichos naturales y meansuplicado mandase quecada les tierrae y posesionee no se poblasen de Caciques request that such los dichos ganados No siendo capacee para cattle is not allowed in the tenerlos yque en lae que lo fuesen se hiziese land, and if it is, that it is taxed. contassacion o como la misma fuese y porque haviendose Vesto por los demi Co Real de Las indiae les emandado arespder que hagan ordenancae sobreles y las lleven a esa mi Real Audiencia los mando que haviendolaehecho y presendo Request to the Audiencia to en esa La veaie y proveaie en lo que act as they deem necessary. a esto toca como os pareciere que mae convenga fecha en Poblete a XV de Abril

de millyquinientos y ochenta y cinco anos yo el Rey Refrendada de erasso y senaladadeeq

D O N P H i l i PE Para que no se ponga Por pto don Antonio de Guevara Gover estanco en el vino ni nador de la Ciudad y Provincia de Tlaxcala carniceriae de la Provia Don Pedro de Torree, don Diego Tellez de Tlaxcala Don Zacarias de Sanctiago indios Princips y Caciquee de lae quatro caveceras de La dicha ciudad y Provincia y Dgo muñoz Camargo Interprete y ennombredella meanhechorelacion La dicha Provincia recibiria mucho dano sisepermitiese poner enella estanco en el Vino y carniceriae y meansuplicado que para que su republica donde confieqleaemte esido sservido Vaya siempre enaugmto tuviese porbien demandar que enella Nosepusiese estanco en las sobredichae cossae por ninguna Racon ni caussa q se ofreciese y aviendose Visto por los de miqo Real de Las Indias porqueteniendo conssideracion a loquemeanservido y sirven los Naturalee de la dicha Provincia

Mean suplicado, que attento aq Hizon a su costa lae yglesias y las sustentan mandase que en los asientos dellae y de las Capillae y en las procisiones dicippli nae cofradias y demas actos publicos. Tu viesen el lugar ya siento que hasta aqui an tenido ecpecialmente La Justicia y Regimito y Principalee de la Republica y que los Spañolec Noseloquiten ni el Patio del Santimo sacramento y que fueren honrrados y favorecidos y se les guardasen sus preeminenciae como Aleales Vasa llos mios, o como la mimad fuese | y Porque quiero ser Informado de laordenquehasta aora seattenido en los dichos Asientos. Lugaree y Pre eminenciae os mando que embieis Relon dello, conlabrevedad que huviere lugar pa Vusto se provea lo que convenga y en el entretanto Lee guardareie y hareie q Le resguarde La costumbrequesea ttenido fecha En Poblete A 16 de Abril de 1585 yo el Rey Refdada y señalada de los dichos

El Rey Mi Virrey, Presidente e oidoree de A la buelta Mi Audiena Real que reside en en La Ciudad de Mexco de la Na spa Don Antonio de Guevara Goverdor de la Ciudad y

Provia de Tlaxcala, don Po de Torree don dgo q qudo porpte de los Indios TelleZ Don Cacariae de STiago Indios Principalee y Caciqs de Lae de la Provia de Tlaxcala quatro cavecerae de la dicha ciudad y Prova Caciques of the area request to the King. se presenten de aciertae y Dgo Munoß Camargo Ymterprete ii ennombredella, mean hecho relaon ordenancae queandehaßer que de diez Años a esta pte sean acrecentdo enessa Tierra las carretae y Carros pa que no Rban daño en sus demulae y Bueyee para effecto de sementeras y otrae granger llevar La Ropa Pipas y otrae Mxas The passage of carriages in the Van en las Flotae, deSde la Ciudad area has risen in the past years. iac de los bueyee y mulae de la Veracruz a la de Mexco y otrae ptee que tienen pasage, por aquella Provia de Las Carretae y Carros entantogrado que pasan de veinte mill Bueyee sin las mulae que son Number of animals in that region. q pasan por aquella provia muchae mas y sin lae harriae y todo Lae Veany provean acerca dos los dichos Bueyee y mulae haßen muchos danos en los sembrados y Cassae de los naturalee y lee comen Damage done by cows and associated species to the Lae Plantae Tunales Magueis crops of indigenous people. Maizales y otras legumbree que porser suprencipal grangeria estambien locasionde que se deSpueblen y dexen Displacement due to the animals. sus Cassae y haziendae | suplicándome q para Remedio dellomandase que encaßo que por La Prova Cattle needs to be guarded if it is to pass by the area.

SiuvieSen de paSar fuese conguarda y hiziesen corralee en lae partes donde pasasen a haßernoche que son sitios If they are to stay, they need to y lugaree conocidos de manera q be fenced so that they do not No se deSparcieSen ni hiziesen daño run around damaging crops. y que las Justicias sinrremiSionalga castigasen Los Delictos y hiziesen pago Damages are to be paid to Los danos que lae haßiendae de los dichos the indigenous people. Naturalec recibiesen. Por quelos dos Arrieros acostumbran allevarsue Mulae a engordar en lae hazdae de los dichos Naturalee, en los llanos The arrieros take mules to be del Phie Sancta marta s Vizte fattened in the indigenous y Santa Ysavel y Lee come la enca people’s land. conquehazen las esterae que lesson de mucho aprovechamiento demae de lae dichae Boyadae les entran por las cassas heredadee y huertae The oxen go to the houses de Giana y Cochinilla y lee derrivan and invade them and eat the Las troxee dee maiz y comen maize. Los cercadas o como la mimad fuese y haviendose Vesto porlosdemigo Real de las Indae Porqueparecien domeJuzta su pretension y deseando como deseo que no Rban agravios Les emandado Responder q ha gan Lae ordenancae que para Remedio de Los dichos daños Maeconvinieren y lae lleven aesa Audiencia los mando que ha Request to the Audiencia to viendo lae hecho y presentado antevos proceed as necessary without Lae Veaie y proveaie en la forma damage to the indigenous Vieredee quemae convenie fecha en people. Poblete a 16 de Abril de 1585 yo el Rey Re Refrenda

y señalada de los dichos

El Rey

Mi Virrey Presite e oidoree de lami Informen con su parecer Audiencia real que reside en la Ciudad cerca de los Indos de de Mexco de la na spa Don Anto de gaza Tlaxcala piden No se les Governador de la ciudad y Provincia de Tlaxcala quite un hospital q en aqlla Don Po de Torree, don Dgo TelleZ Don ciudad fundaron sus passados Cacariae de STiago Indios Princips y en esse treto No den luga y Caciques de lae quatro cavecerae de que se les hagan agravio La dha ciudad y Provincia mean hecho ReLon que al Principio de su combersion sus Padree fundaron en aquella ciudad un hospital devaxo de la Invocacion de la Anunciacion de NSa donde se curan muchos Pobree Indios y espa ñoleee y meansuplicado lee mandase dar mi real ca para que agra niennen [gunsso] No se le puedan pintar

El Rey Presite e oydoree de la mi Audiencia real q reside la Ciudad de Mexco dela Nueva Spa. Don Antonio de Guevara governador de La ciudad y Provincia de Tlaxcala don Po de Torres, donde o TelleZ, Don Caca riae de sTiago Indios princips Caciqs delae Caciques of the area request to the King. quatro cavecerae de la dicha ciudad y Provia mean hecho relacion que por cedula mia y Comision de los mis virreyes que an sido en essae Provinciae Don Fernando de Portogal fianasco Berdugo don Philipe de Arellano queansido Alcaldee mayoree En la Provincia de Tlaxcala senalaron y amojonaron los Terminos de The land had been divided and la dicha ciudad y Provincia dividiendolos established before, but other Spanish de La otrae Provinciae. y que despuee people are coming and trying to take more land for ranching. a egos spañoles con color de dezis q tienen mandamos titulos de mas y Provisionae de los Virreyee y de esa Audiencia pa tener estancias y cavalleriae de tierrae enotra seanmetido e Introducido los termi nos de la dicha Provincia de Tlaxcala por fuerca y contral dga delos naturaleae della. Pretendiendo adquerir Posesion piden lae dichae estanciae y cavallerias Causelo Zamse

deBiendo ser sin perjuicio deLos dichos Indios y queaunque seman dan hazer diligencias sinhaberlae avisar nidartraslado alaepartee en Despite efforts to make the process cuyo perjuicio es de hecho, sean advance and to protect the entrado enellae y Las Tienen y poseen indigenous property, other people are invading their land and causing Como son Un fulano Roman y Maria damage to the indigenous people. de Portillo y otras muchae Personae en Los dichos naturales havian Rdo y Recivian grande agravio supli can dome que para cremo decesiosmdale q biaseden avery Vision La dicha Prova y Renovar lae dichas Mojonerae ya quietar y deRivar las cassae de Lae It is requested to the King that the dichas estanciae y Cavalleriae que se division of the land is reestablished, huvierentomado y tuvieren sin lidencia that the ranches and farms are given back to their owners, and that these mia y de los dichos mis Virreyee terms are upheld - and if they are not, y q se bolviesen a sus dueños y que seguar that they are punished for it. dasen Los dichos terminos y moJonerae so gravee penae o como la misma fuese y aviendose visto por los demip oeLas Indiae fueacordado que devia mandar dar esta mi ca por la qualosmdo Veaie losobredicho y loqueay y pasa cercadello y lo proveaie de manera Los dichos Indios No Sean

agraviados y Le esta galuza fecha en Poblete a 16 de Abril de 1585 yo el Rey y señalada de los dichos

El Rey Vean Lae ordenancias Mi Virrey Presidente e oydoree tiviesen los Inos de Tlaxcala sobre el de la mi Audienciareal que reside en La Abasto de sus Ciudad de Mexco de la Nueva Spa don carniceriae y provean lo Antonio de Guevara governador de la ciudad que convenga y Provincia de Tlaxcala don Po de Torree don Diego Tellez don Cacariae de Sancto Indios prin cipalee y Caciqs de lae quatro cavallrae de la dicha ciudad y Provincia y Diego Muñoz Camargo Interprete en nombre della mean hecho relacion que despuee que en la dicha ciudad lean hecho los hemtre de Abbasto de el carnero los obligados prohiven y de fienden que otra persona alga de sus na turalee no pueda vender carnero duzado ser ensuperjuicio y meansuplicado mandase queansilos dichos naturalee

El Rey mi Virrey Presidente e oydores de La mi Audiencia Real que reside La ciudad de Mexco delanueva Spa Don Antonio de guevara Governador de La ciudad y provincia de Tlaxcala don Pedro de Torres don Diego de TelleZ don Cacariae de Sancto Indios Principales Caciqs de Lae quatro Cavecerae de la dha Caciques of the area Ciudad y Provincia y Diego Muñoz request to the King. Camargo Interprete en nombre della mean hecho relacion Los obligados de Lae carniceriae de Vaca y Carnero so colo de dezir queandedar el Abasto de Lae dichas Carnes a La dicha ciudad llevan Butchers take their cattle to be a engordar Los ganados entre las sementerae fed in the land of indigenous people, not in the land that is de lro naturales y enmae Cuantidad de supposed to be given to them Loque es menester para el dicho aBasto for such activity. y No Lo quierentraer niapacentar en Los egidos que estan señalados para ello que es Los llanos deama Linalpa en Los montee de Teopantlaepac puesto que son lugare y partes fertiles y bastantee para ener el dicho Ganado y su plicandome mandase que no se les permitiese Indigenous people request to a Los dichos obligados Traer mas ganados the King to forbid bringing the del que fuese necessario para el dicho cattle to such areas, and that they are only allowed into the Abasto y que este anduviese los egidos delineated parts. señalados por la dicha ciudad y No en

Lae cienagas de Atlancatepac y en Lae des Philipe y Texupa y que Indigenous people specifically require that these animals are particularmte no se permitiese que not allowed in the sementeras anduviesen tre los maizales y semen and the maize crops. terae o como la misma fuese y Por que aviendose Visto por Los demigo de Lae Indiae y parecido que es justo dar orden en esto, de manera q Yuxepua seabiengovernada, sin agravio de Los Naturales, les hemandado responder Request to the Audiencia to Hagan Ordenancae a Ello y Lae lleven proceed as necessary and do aesa mi Real Audiencia . os mando que whatever is needed. haviendo lae hecho y presentado antellos La Veaie y proveaie cerca de ellae Lo q bienedsee quemaecombenga fecha en Poblete a XVI de Abril de MDlcccV anos yo el Rey Re frendada de eraso señaladada de

El Rey

El Rey Indios de Tlaxcala Puequdo Los Indo de la Provia Mi Virrey Presite e oidoree de la mi Audia de Tlax Real que rreside La ciudad de Mexco cala que setasen enella de La nueva ecpa Don Antonio de Guevara Lae ordenae Tuvieren, acerca Governador de la Ciudad y Provincia de Tlaxcala de Lae persae que tuvien Don Po de Torree don Do TelleZ don Caca gandos No Los puedan meter riae de sTiago Indios Principalee y caciquee Caciques of the area request to the King. en suc sementerae hasta de Lae Cavecerae de la dicha ciudad y Provia haver cogido sus legunbrec y y Dgo MuñoZ Camargo interprete ennombre della hechos suagto Las vean y pro Me an hecho relacion que muchae Persae Tratan en hazer canneradae vean cercadello lo que mae People buy thousands of convenga y lo tienen por grangeria y de comprar Borregos sheep and have them as a en cantidad de made de dieZ y veinte mill ranching activity. acudiendo a esa Audiencia y hassiendo en ella siniestrarelacion disiendo que treeASBrfo de lae ciudadee y Pueblos de españoles; es necesario Trai gan los ganados por entre las sementerae de los naturalee selee ha dado Provion The Province is being freeeo sin embargo de lae ordenancae greatly affected because the cattle is being brought de agostaderos que estan hechac y through it - cattle which is puedenmae de ya contraellas ee engran being directed to the towns dano de aquella Provincia su of the Spanish. Plicandome quepuec no se devia permi tir el dano general por el Bien

Particular mandase que no se diese Lugar Indigenous people request that aqueel dho Ganado entrase en sus sementerae such cattle enter their lands only hasta aver cogido sus legumbree y hecho su agto when they are already done o como la merced fuese y Porque havien picking up their crops. dose visto por los de mi Consso Real de las Indias ha parecido que en lo sobre dicho se lec hasse agravio y para remedio del Lec he man dado responder que hagan sue ordenancae The King requests that the y Lae lleven a esa mi Real Audia necessary provisions are taken so that the damage is los mando que haviendolac hecho y Presen stopped. tado enella las Veaic y proveais en lo que a esto toca como os pareciere que mae conviene fecha en Poblete a dies y seic de Abril de Mdlcccv anos yo el Rey Por mandado de su Md Antonio de eraso senalada del Presite Vega Gaeca CTieeav vouello hinizossa Va tanego

El Rey que haga Justa a los Indo de la Presidente e oydoree de La mi Audiencia Prova Real que reside La ciudad de Mexco de La de Tlaxcala cerca de q piden Nueva ecpa Don Antonio de Guevara Goverdor se de la tasaon q esta hecha de de la ciudad y Provincia de Tlaxcala Don Lacantd de gando q cada Pd de Torree don Dv Tellez estancia de las q ayenaquella ttra ha de tener

1586-04-13 , San Lorenzo el Real. Real cédula al Marqués de Villamanrique, virrey de Nueva España, ordenándole examinar la petición de los naturales de los pueblos de "Chachalentlán" y "Coabitlán" y sus sujetos, así como de otros, acerca de que no se permitiera a los oficiales, secretarios y ministros de justicia tener ganados, estancias ni granjerías, de lo que se derivaban daños para los indios, y que proveyera lo que conviniera, de manera que los naturales no recibieran más daño. Reference code: ES.41091.AGI/23//MEXICO,1091,L.11,F.308R-308V. el deyv dia se despayo una notaria de las yndias para el deyo goncalo Xi menes estande en la nueva españa con un signo como este y con las demas clausulas ordenasas El Rey Marques de Villamanrique que pariente mi Virrey de la Na spa que Virrey governador y capitan general de la provea lo q convenga so nueva españa o a la persao personas a cuyo q los yndios de aquellas cargo fuere el govierno della, por parte de los tra piden semande q naturales de los pueblos dechachalentlan y oficiales y ministros coabitlan y sus subjetos y los de mas naturales ta della no tengan deesa tierra me ha sido hecha Relacion que grangerias de ganados acausa de que los officiales secretarios ymi por los daños que dello nistros de Justicia della han tenido y tienen Secretaries and officials of the siguen a los dichos Audiencia have cattle of all portiato y grangeria descriadores de ganados sorts, and ranches, that cause indios y si le parecie mayores y menores de yeguas y tener estan damage to the indigenous se que conviene que cias dellos han resultados y Resultan gran people’s land and crops. ules las de yasgran des daños e ynconvinientes en grande des gerias lo haga truicion de los dichos naturales, porque Cattle of the officials eats people’s con los dichos ganados les comen sus yanges crops and damages the land. heredades y sementeras, y que los pastores de los dichos officiales hassen grandes fuercay The shepherds and guards of cattle vexaciones y agravios a los dichos natura cause damage to the women and les y sus mujeres y hejos y que aunque los children of indigenous people. alcaldes mayores y corregidores los veen y entienen por tocar a los dichos officiales por The officials see this bad situation cuya mano han de pasar sus Residencias but they do not do anything about it. lo disimulan y asi quedan sin castigo Y

100

los dichos naturales sin satisfacion de sus da nos y agravios suplicandome lo mandase Indigenous people ask the King to forbid that any of his officials can proveer y Remediar de manera que cesasen have cattle or get land in the land of los dichos daños proveyendo que ninguno de the indigenous people. los dichos officiales y ministros de Justia no tenga ni pueda tener los dichos ganados estan cias ni grangerias dellos y en si soloniencom goanea de otra persa ni por otra vanimuna alguna y haviendose visto por los demi The King asks the Audiencia to do conso de las Yndias fueacordado que devia man whatever is more convenient to solve the situation in favor of the indigenous dar dar esta mi cedula por la qual los mando people. que beais los dtre dicho y proveais en ello lo que convenga y tengais particular quta The King requests that the naturals do not con que los dichos naturales no rescivan dano receive any damage when solving this y si os pareciere que conviene para ello situation. y para que no rescivan dano los dichos natu rales quitar a los dichos officiales y minis The King states clearly that if it is tros que no tengan las dichas grangerias necessary to remove these officials from their posts so that the situation can be se la quitareis por que mi boluntad es que solved, then so be it, because he does not no rescivan agravio encosa alguna Fha en want this situation to continue and wants S lorenco el Real a trece de abril de milly that the situation can be solved without quso y ochenta y seis anos yo el Rey Re hurting the indigenous people. fiendada de Juan VaSqueS y senalada del Consejo El Rey Alonso Garcia Presidente e oydores de la mi Auda Real de Neyla que reside en la ciudad de Mexco de la nueva para que le exsa españa saucoqueyo he hecho mnd como por mi neneZ la presente la leagua alonso garcia de Neyla Residente en la tierra de que sea mi escrivano y notario y v Co de las Ynas

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1589-07-19 , San Lorenzo. Instrucción de gobierno a Luis de Velasco [y Castilla], virrey de Nueva España y presidente de la Audiencia de México. Reference code: ES.41091.AGI/23//MEXICO,1092,L.12,F.204V-226V.

los yngenios y planten las cana e lae que pareciere ser conveniente paello con que sea sin perjuicio de los yndios y entendiendo que haside tener negros para lervio defue ingenios sin que entrellos ocupen yndios So gra vee penas

Otro Si porque soy informado que 19 muchas delae estancias y ganado de spañolee sean dado The land of the Spanish ranches en perjuicio delos Indios por are too close to the indigenous people’s land, which causes that estar sus tierra io muy cerca the cattle goes to their land and desus labrancae y haZiendas eats their crops. acuya causa los dhos ganados les comen y destruyen sus fructros y lee hazen otros danos Para remedio dsh proveereic que el oydor que fuere a lisitar una de las principalee causae que It is requested that one of the oidores lleve acargo sea bisitar las dhae goes to the Spanish land unannounced so that it can be seen if estanciae sin ser requerido y ver there are any damages being caused siestan ensuperjuicios o en sus to the indigenous land, because it is trenae y defuio offvo lae mande the intent that the situation is solved luego quitar y pasar a iotar pre without hurting anyone. sean validade sinperjuicio de nadie pues por la voluntad de Dios la tierraee tan larga q los

102

Unos y Los otros podran biencaver The land is large and big and Los liazesledano lo qual hara everyone can fit in it. el dho oydor llamadas e oydas las partes a quien en biareel 20 Soy informado que en algunas delae dhae estancias de ganados ocupan Some of the cattle ranches are occupying land that can be used for algunas tierrae de Regadios growing wheat. muy buenae para sembrar trigo y que siallinoestuviesen lae dhae estanciae los Yndios sembrarian lae dhas Yndiae tierrae de trigo deque ver If such cattle ranches were not there, nia muy buen y probecho por indigenous people would be there que altrigo de Regadio no le growing irrigation land wheat, yela y el que sea qe sin zesarfes which can survive to freezing. por la mayor parte zee quedanoZ de los yelos y por esta causa al It is because of the lack of wheat that guna vezes dizen que ay falta it is said that there is bread lacking. de pan en la tierra ynformare eys de las tierrae que sunos de regadios y darede ordentamos It will be informed about how much land is sesiembran de trigo y sialgunas being used for growing wheat, and if some of estanciae de ganados en ella e the land in the area does not have an owner, the vuig que no tengan tutor legi cattle will be moved to another area where it will not cause damage to indigenous people, timo a lae tierrae mandarlee and the indigenous people will be encouraged e y b quitar della y pasar a otras to grow wheat without any damage to their land. partes a donde esten sin perjuio y daeic orden con los dhos yndios

103

como en todae lae dhae tierrae de regadio sembrar trigo porquela tierra sea muy lrenlarecidan y situvieren algimitabe llamadas e oydas lae ptee hareie en ello Justa 21 Otro si para la seguridad y pobladciones dela tierra y particularmte pra estorvarlae imbasionee de los yndo eteisimecae de donde tanto dano resulta ynformazos deyo en que tzee y lugaree convenia fazer y edificar pueblos despanolee pro curando faver de algunos buenos sitios proveyna dvfohello lo que viene del que nialconvenga que sea sin perjuicio de Yndios y informen deloq en ello sezuvdes 22 y por que acasetrene Relaon la ciudad dela Veracruz Es malfana ysinifuo delos que della van ala nueva spana y de alla vienen aembarcarse pelogeanmenfu vidae por de yenisfe enelamae de lo q anuernia paz no aver otra pde y lugar donde estan y pa remedio decol parece conuerna hazer y poblar un pueblo despañoles

104

He tenido por bien de mandar dar esta mi cedula; Por Laqualos mando hagais Justicia alos dhos indios en lo que piden que assi es mi voluntad, ferda en AranJuez a quinze de mayo de mil y seiscientos y dos yo El Rey Por mando

El Rey

LosindiosdeTescuc Mi virrei Presidente y oydores de mi audiencia real que reside o Al virrei, en la ciudad de Mexico de la nueva españa por petición de los naturales audienciade de la ciudad y provincia de Tezcuco y sus subjetos se me ha dado Relon MexicoquehaganJ que en los terminos dellae se han dado de mucho tiempo atr Por usticia Los virreye muchae cavallerias de tierrae a los españoles y sitios breveysumariamen destanciae paraganados molinos y camerae contanto exceso que Damages caused by tesobrelo cassi ya no tienen donde sembrar parasustentarse y pagar sus tributos cows and associated species. quelosindiosdeTes y nocogen la mayor de lo que siembran por la mucha abundancia cuco que ay entre las poblaciones y sementeras de bueyee cavallos mulas pidencercadealgun y otros ganados menores queselas comen y destruyen sin poderlo resistir ni reparan aunya causa muchos de los dichos naturales se as The indigenous people casasenquereciven han ido y ausentado de las haciendad y seusez minos a otros pueblos have left the land because de encomenderos engrandaño y perjuicio de las rentas i tributos they have nowhere to live agravio informen or work. Corrda Reales, y para que los quae Presente ay se puedan conservar y bivir con comodidad se me hasupp carentoarllo les hiciesemos demandar que de aquiadelante Los Virreyes y personas a cuyo It is requested that the viceroys and people that are cargo estuviese el govierno no den mas cavallerias de tierrae in charge of the government sitios ni estancias para molinos ganados, Molinos, Perreras are not to give any more nicameras, ni para otra cosa alguna de qualquier genero, ranches or land for windmills, cattle or anything else related Calidad que sea aninguna persona de la dicha ciudad y Provincia or not related. y sus subjetos y serminos dellas, y que provean como los dichos naturales no recivan daños ni agravio alguno en lae dichae It is to be ensured that no sementeras y quesean castigados con Rigor losquelos hicieren indigenous people receive y sabiendose platicado sobrello en mi Consejo de las Indiae any damage regarding this he tenido por bien demandar dar esta mi cedula, porlaqual situation, and that those that damage them, are to be os mando hagais Justicia breveysumariamente a los dichos punished. indios en lo que piden y me ymbieis Relación de lo que ay y pasa y conbiene proveer cercadello; Para que visto se provea lo que convenga Ferma en Aranjuez A quinze de mayo de millyseiscientos y dos anos Yo el Rey, por medio del Rey nuestro señor Juan de Ibarra y señalada del Consejo

105

II. Table. Descriptive codes 1550-03-24 (known), Valladolid. Real Cédula a la Audiencia de Aggregated code México para que provean que las estancias ganaderas se concedan donde no puedan provocar daño a los indios y si se hubiesen de dar, que estén apartadas de los pueblos de los indios para que los ganados no hagan daño a sus maizales y sementeras.

Damage done by cows and associated species to the crops of Direct damage by indigenous people cattle Cows roaming freely cause damage Direct damage by cattle The situation caused by animals needs to be addressed by Orders by the King officials Lands to be given where no damage can be done Orders by the King Cattle ranches to be far away Orders by the King Damage is to be paid by the owner of the cattle Orders by the King Report back to the King Orders by the King

1568-06-07, Aranjuez. Instrucción de gobierno a Martín Enríquez, virrey de Nueva España y presidente de la Audiencia de México. Damage done by cows to the crops of indigenous people Direct damage by cattle The oidor must visit the land of the Spanish and see that it is not Orders by the King affecting the indigenous people’s land There is enough land for everybody without hurting each other - The land is big. ensured by the oidor Cattle ranches occupy irrigation land Damage pushed by the Spanish – indirect damage Indigenous people growing wheat Description of the situation Irrigation wheat is good Associated species Lack of bread Description of the situation Irrigation land must be used for growing crops Orders by the King Order the indigenous to grow food Orders by the King

People have too little land for their sheep Description of the situation. There is more land that they can use that does not affect the The land is big. indigenous crops

106

Sheep owners do not dare to go out of their land and are being Description of the pursued by judges situation. Request that the minor cattle is allowed to roam in the land that Request by Spanish does not have crops settlers. Any damage by the animals will be paid by the owners Orders by the King. To be allowed to take the animals to these lands from October to Orders by the King April Request to the Audiencia to proceed as necessary without damage Orders by the King. to the indigenous people

1585-04-16 , Poblet. Real cédula al virrey de Nueva España y la Audiencia de México para que vean las ordenanzas que han de hacer los indios de Tlaxcala sobre la proliferación de ganados en aquellas tierras. Caciques of the area request to the King. Description of the situation. Spanish people who have married indigenous people and have Damage pushed by inherited the land they had, want to populate the land with cattle the Spanish – and other associated species. indirect damage. Caciques request that such cattle is not allowed in the land, and if Requests by it is, that it is taxed. indigenous people. Request to the Audiencia to act as they deem necessary. Orders by the King.

1585-04-16 , Poblet. Real cédula a al virrey de Nueva España y la Audiencia de México para que vean las ordenanzas que han de hacer los indios principales de la provincia de Tlaxcala, con el fin de que sus sementeras y granjerías no reciban daño de los bueyes y mulas de las carretas que pasan por ellas. Caciques of the area request to the King. Description of the situation. The passage of carriages in the area has risen in the past years. Damage by other species. Number of animals in that region. Description of the situation. Damage done by cows and associated species to the crops of Direct damage by indigenous people. cattle Displacement due to the animals. Direct damage by cattle.

107

Cattle needs to be guarded if it is to pass by the area. Requests by the indigenous people. If they are to stay, they need to be fenced so that they do not run Requests by the around damaging crops. indigenous people. Damages are to be paid to the indigenous people. Requests by the indigenous people. The arrieros take mules to be fattened in the indigenous people’s Damage pushed by land. the Spanish – indirect damage. The oxen go to the houses and invade them and eat the maize. Direct damage by cattle. Request to the Audiencia to proceed as necessary without damage Orders by the King. to the indigenous people.

1585-04-16 , Poblet. Real cédula a la Audiencia de México para que vea sobre lo que piden los indios de Tlaxcala, de que se cambien las mojoneras y se derriben las casas en las estancias y caballerías que se hubiesen tomado sin licencia. Caciques of the area request to the King. Description of the situation The land had been divided and established before, but other Damage pushed by Spanish people are coming and trying to take more land for the Spanish – ranching. indirect damage. Despite efforts to make the process advance and to protect the Description of the indigenous property, other people are invading their land and situation. causing damage to the indigenous people. It is requested to the King that the division of the land is Requests by the reestablished, that the ranches and farms are given back to their indigenous people. owners, and that these terms are upheld - and if they are not, that they are punished for it.

1585-04-16 , Poblet. Real cédula a la Audiencia de México para que provea sobre lo que piden los indios de Tlaxcala, de que los proveedores de las carnicerías de la ciudad no lleven allí más ganado del necesario, ya que aprovechan para engordarlo en sus sementeras. Caciques of the area request to the King. Description of the situation. Butchers take their cattle to be fed in the land of indigenous Damage pushed by people, not in the land that is supposed to be given to them for the Spanish – such activity. indirect damage. Indigenous people request to the King to forbid bringing the cattle Requests by the to such areas, and that they are only allowed into the delineated indigenous people. parts. Indigenous people specifically require that these animals are not Requests by the allowed in the sementeras and the maize crops. indigenous people.

1585-04-16 , Poblete. Real cédula al virrey y Audiencia de México para que a petición de Antonio de Guevara, Pedro de

108

Torres, Diego Téllez y Zacarías de Santiago, caciques de Tlaxcala y de Diego Muñoz Camargo, su intérprete, provean lo más conveniente sobre las ordenanzas sobre agostaderos para que no reciban agravio metiendo el ganado en sus tierras hasta haber cogido sus legumbres. Caciques of the area request to the King. Description of the situation. People buy thousands of sheep and have them as a ranching Description of the activity. situation. The Province is being greatly affected because the cattle is being Damage pushed by brought through it - cattle which is being directed to the towns of the Spanish – the Spanish. indirect damage. Indigenous people request that such cattle enter their lands only Requests by when they are already done picking up their crops. indigenous people. The King requests that the necessary provisions are taken so that Orders by the King. the damage is stopped.

1586-04-13 , San Lorenzo el Real. Real cédula al Marqués de Villamanrique, virrey de Nueva España, ordenándole examinar la petición de los naturales de los pueblos de "Chachalentlán" y "Coabitlán" y sus sujetos, así como de otros, acerca de que no se permitiera a los oficiales, secretarios y ministros de justicia tener ganados, estancias ni granjerías, de lo que se derivaban daños para los indios, y que proveyera lo que conviniera, de manera que los naturales no recibieran más daño. Secretaries and officials of the Audiencia have cattle of all sorts, Direct damage by and ranches, that cause damage to the indigenous people’s land cattle. and crops. Cattle of the officials eats people’s crops and damages the land. Direct damage by cattle. The shepherds and guards of cattle cause damage to the women Damage pushed by and children of indigenous people. the Spanish – indirect damage. The shepherds and guards of cattle cause damage to the women Damage pushed by and children of indigenous people. the Spanish – indirect damage. Indigenous people ask the King to forbid that any of his officials Requests by the can have cattle or get land in the land of the indigenous people. indigenous people. The King asks the Audiencia to do whatever is more convenient Orders by the King. to solve the situation in favor of the indigenous people. The King requests that the naturals do not receive any damage Orders by the King. when solving this situation. The King states clearly that if it is necessary to remove these Orders by the King. officials from their posts so that the situation can be solved, then so be it, because he does not want this situation to continue and wants that the situation can be solved without hurting the indigenous people.

109

1589-07-19 , San Lorenzo. Instrucción de gobierno a Luis de Velasco [y Castilla], virrey de Nueva España y presidente de la Audiencia de México. The land of the Spanish ranches are too close to the indigenous Direct damage by people’s land, which causes that the cattle goes to their land and cattle. eats their crops. It is requested that one of the oidores goes to the Spanish land Orders by the King. unannounced so that it can be seen if there are any damages being caused to the indigenous land, because it is the intent that the situation is solved without hurting anyone. The land is large and big and everyone can fit in it. Idea. Some of the cattle ranches are occupying land that can be used Description of the for growing wheat. situation. If such cattle ranches were not there, indigenous people would be Description of the there growing irrigation land wheat, which can survive to situation. freezing. It is because of the lack of wheat that it is said that there is bread Description of the lacking. situation. It will be informed about how much land is being used for Orders by the King. growing wheat, and if some of the land in the area does not have an owner, the cattle will be moved to another area where it will not cause damage to indigenous people, and the indigenous people will be encouraged to grow wheat without any damage to their land.

1602-05-15 , Aranjuez. Real cédula al virrey de Nueva España y la Audiencia de México para que hagan justicia breve y sumariamente sobre lo que piden los indios de la ciudad y provincia de Texcoco de no recibir daño ni agravio en sus sementeras por la abundancia de bueyes, caballos, mulas y otros ganados menores que se las comen y destruyen. Damages caused by cows and associated species. Direct damage by cattle. The indigenous people have left the land because they have Land displacement. nowhere to live or work. It is requested that the viceroys and people that are in charge of Orders by the King. the government are not to give any more ranches or land for windmills, cattle or anything else related or not related. It is to be ensured that no indigenous people receive any damage Orders by the King. regarding this situation, and that those that damage them, are to be punished.

III. Table. Analytical codes Descriptive codes Analytical codes Description of the situation. Disruption and creation of a new Land displacement. network of relations. Direct damage by cattle. 110

Damage pushed by the Spanish – Indirect damage. Damage by other species. The land is big. Nature is big and vast. Orders by the King. The existence of cattle is not Requests by indigenous people. disputed.

IV. First selection of documents

Archivo General de Indias41 - Mapas, planos, documentos iconográficos y documentos especiales - México - 1544 (probably42). Dibujo del golfo de México y costa de Nueva España, desde el cabo de Santa Elena hasta el río Pánuco. - 1583-05-04, Aranjuez. Pruebas de impresión de naipes fabricados en México, correspondientes a la contrata celebrada con Alonso Martínez de Orteguilla. - Estampas - 1685 (probably). Grabado de Escenas indias con toros. - Ingenios y muestras - 1684 (probably). Vista lateral de un navío francés. - Panamá, Santa Fe y Quito - 1614-04. Pintura de las tierras, pantanos y anegadizos del pueblo de Bogotá hecha por mandato de la Real Audiencia desta çiudad de Sancta Fee del Nuevo Reyno de Granada en la causa que en ella trata el señor fiscal con don Francisco Maldonado de Mendoça. - Santo Domingo - 1744 (known). Mapa de las haciendas Sacalohondo, Bejucal, Aguas Berdes, Govea, aciento nuevo de Ursulica y el hato de Ariguanavo. - 1752-03-26. Mapa de las haciendas Tobosi, Ciego del Potrero y hato de Yguara, en la jurisdicción de Sancti Spíritus. - 1785-02-07 (known). Mapa del hato Carrasco y de otros próximos. - 1786 (known). Plano del hato nombrado Buenavista, en Puerto Rico. - 1778-11-05 (known). Dibujo de una vaca sin pelo y de piel vistosa, con su cría, nacida en una hacienda de Veracruz. - Filipinas - 1753. Santiago Apóstol de Dapitán. Fuerte. - Patronato Real

41 A highlighted sentence in this section means that the item is a document. 42 The archivists placed a note after each date to indicate if the date was approximate, probably, or probably after the given date. Wherever noted, these notes correspond to the archivists’ work. 111

- Descubrimientos, descripciones, población, conquista y pacificación. - Descubrimientos, etc.: Nueva España. - Descubrimientos, descripciones, etc.: Nueva España. - 1598. Expediente de Juan de Oñate: Nuevo México. - Informaciones de méritos y servicios. - Informaciones de méritos: Nueva España. - Informaciones de méritos y servicios: Nueva España. - 1595. Méritos,servicios:Cristóbal de Ontiveros:Nueva Vizcaya.

- Gobierno - Indiferente General - Registros-Asientos y Capitulaciones - Registro de Disposiciones: Río Marañón - 1530-05-20, Madrid. Poblamiento de las tierras entre río Marañón y Cabo de la Vela. - Registros generalísimos - Registros Generalísimos - 1501-10-19 , Granada. Licencia de pase a Indias. - 1511-02-26 , Sevilla. Licencia de pase. - 1526-01-26 , Toledo. Real cédula a los oidores de la Audiencia de la Isla Española, para que hagan justicia en lo que pide a Benito de Astorga, vecino de dicha Isla, referente a mandar retirar de un ejido de agua que tiene para hacer un ingenio de azúcar, unas vacas que allí tiene Diego Fernández, mercader, porque esto perjudica a la obra de dicho ingenio. - 1510-06-15 , Monzón. Orden a Diego Colón. - 1520-09-21 , Burgos. Orden a las autoridades de La Española. - 1531-09-09 , Avila. Real Provisión a los Concejos, regidores, asistentes, alcaldes etc. de los Reinos, remitiéndoles los capítulos de condiciones para hacer los contratos con los labradores que quieran ir a poblar Indias, sobre las bases que se indican. - 1514-11-28 , León. Orden a Francisco de Garay. - 1528-06-30 , Monzón. Real Cédula al Gobernador o juez de residencia de la Isla de San Juan para que se informen si es cierto como dice Diego Muriel, vecino de dicha Isla y encargado de los indios que hay en una hacienda de la ribera de Toa, que en dicha hacienda se entrometen personas que llevan allí sus ganados, contraviniendo las ordenanzas de dicha Isla, y causando perjuicio a la citada hacienda; por lo que pide, que le señalen a esta hacienda de la ribera de Toa, una legua en derredor que le sirva de era para sus ganados, no pudiendo entrar ningunos otros en ella, y envíen dicha información al Consejo de Indias. - Consultas Indiferente General - 1550-11-08 (probably after). Sumario de Consulta del Consejo de Indias. 112

- Audiencia de Guadalajara - Consejo: Cartas y expedientes - Consejo: Cartas y expedientes de cabildos seculares - Cartas y Expedientes de varios Cabildos Seculares - 1607-05-09 (probably). Cartas de cabildos seculares. - Consejo: Cartas y expedientes de la Audiencia de Guadalajara. - Cartas Expedientes Presidente Oidores - 1607 (probably). Traslado de auto acordado de la Audiencia de Guadalajara de 5 de julio de 1595 para que los dueños de ganados los traigan con guarda y no les hagan daños a los indios en sus sementeras. - Audiencia de México - Registros de oficio y partes - Registros de oficio y partes: Nueva España - 1531-08-17 , Ávila. Real cédula a la Audiencia de México para que no saque más de la villa de Santiesteban y provincia de Pánuco yeguas, vacas, ovejas y plantas que fueren necesarios para su proveimiento, procurando que no deje de perpetuar en dicha villa y provincia los citados ganados y plantas. - 1533-01-25 , Madrid. Real cédula a la Audiencia de México, y justicias y oficiales de Veracruz para que conceda en merced a Francisco de Berrio una cuarta parte de unas vacas que se hallan desmandadas en dicha ciudad, y del resto se hagan cargo los oficiales reales. - 1538-04-08 , Valladolid. Real cédula a la Audiencia de México para que haga justicia en la solicitud de Doña Isabel, hija de Moctezuma, que se queja de que el marqués del Valle y otras personas han hecho en tierra de los indios, pueblo de Tacuba, cuya encomienda ella tiene, ciertos molinos en los cuales tienen gallinas y puercos y bueyes y caballos que comen las sementeras de los dichos indios de que reciban mucho daño, por lo que suplica se mande que en los dichos molinos no hubiesen las dichas gallinas ni puercos ni bueyes ni caballos sueltos. - 1593-04-06 , Madrid (España). Real cédula a Luis de Velasco, virrey de Nueva España, ordenándole disponer lo que más convenga acerca de lo que pide Gaspar de Rivadeneyra sobre que se le diera licencia para sacar cierto número de cabezas de ganado bravo de unas estancias con destino a las carnicerías públicas. - 1582-06-04 , Lisboa. Real cédula a [Lorenzo Suárez de Mendoza], conde de Coruña y virrey de Nueva España, para que se informe y resuelva sobre la petición de Diego de Ibarra, gobernador de Nueva Vizcaya, de pasar a Nueva España el excedente del ganado vacuno de dicha región. - 1602-05-15 , Aranjuez. Real cédula al virrey de Nueva España y la Audiencia de México para que hagan justicia breve y sumariamente sobre lo que piden los indios de la ciudad y provincia de Texcoco de no recibir daño ni agravio en sus sementeras por la abundancia de bueyes, caballos, mulas y otros ganados menores que se las comen y destruyen.

113

- 1585-04-16, Poblet. Real cédula a al virrey de Nueva España y la Audiencia de México para que vean las ordenanzas que han de hacer los indios principales de la provincia de Tlaxcala, con el fin de que sus sementeras y granjerías no reciban daño de los bueyes y mulas de las carretas que pasan por ellas. - 1603-05-05 , Aranjuez. Real cédula a la Audiencia de Nueva Galicia para que informe acerca de la petición de la ciudad de México de que no se den licencias para matar vacas, cabras ni ovejas. - 1603-05-05 , Aranjuez. Real cédula a la Audiencia de México para que informe acerca de la petición de la ciudad de México de que no se den licencias para matar vacas, cabras ni ovejas. - 1549-10-09 , Valladolid. Real Cédula a la Audiencia de México para que provean que se remedie el daño que hace el ganado a las sementeras y labranzas de los indios, pues se comen sus cosechas y los hieren y matan. - 1550-04-24 , Valladolid. Carta de [Juan de] Sámano, [secretario del Consejo de Indias], a Luis de Velasco, que va como virrey, dándole cuenta del envío de una serie de despachos para Nueva España y Perú. - 1550-05-02 , Valladolid. Real cédula a la Audiencia de México, confirmando otra de 24 de marzo de 1550, para que las estancias de ganados se muden allí donde no perjudiquen a los indios. - 1550-05-04, Valladolid. Carta de Juan de Sámano, [secretario del Consejo de Indias], a Luis de Velasco, que va como virrey, dándole cuenta del envío de una serie de despachos para Nueva España. - 1550-05-07 , Valladolid. Real cédula al licenciado [Hernando] Gómez de Santillán, oidor de la Audiencia de México, aumentándole por un año el plazo de 6 meses que tienen los oidores para deshacerse de sus ganados y granjerías. - 1585-04-16 , Poblet. Real cédula a la Audiencia de México para que provea sobre lo que piden los indios de Tlaxcala, de que los proveedores de las carnicerías de la ciudad no lleven allí más ganado del necesario, ya que aprovechan para engordarlo en sus sementeras. - 1585-04-16 , Poblet. Real cédula a la Audiencia de México para que vea sobre lo que piden los indios de Tlaxcala, de que se cambien las mojoneras y se derriben las casas en las estancias y caballerías que se hubiesen tomado sin licencia. - 1585-04-16 , Poblet. Real cédula al virrey de Nueva España y la Audiencia de México para que vean las ordenanzas que han de hacer los indios de Tlaxcala sobre la proliferación de ganados en aquellas tierras. - 1550-03-24 (known) , Valladolid. Real Cédula a la Audiencia de México para que provean que las estancias ganaderas se concedan donde no puedan provocar daño a los indios y si se hubiesen de dar, que estén apartadas de los pueblos de los indios para que los ganados no hagan daño a sus maizales y sementeras. - 1551-09-04 , Valladolid. Real cédula a [Luis de Velasco y Ruiz de Alarcón], virrey de Nueva España para que se informe y

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provea lo que considere conveniente en relación con la queja de los indios del pueblo de Tepecoculco sobre que el ganado mayor introducido por los pobladores españoles es muy dañino para el cultivo del pueblo. - 1568-06-07 , Aranjuez. Instrucción de gobierno a Martín Enríquez, virrey de Nueva España y presidente de la Audiencia de México. - 1576-02-20 , Madrid. Real cédula al virrey de Nueva España para que haga disponga lo que considere acerca delo que pide Juan Velázquez de Salazar en nombre de la ciudad de Los Ángeles [Puebla], sobre el agostadero de sus ganados, sin perjuicio de las sementeras y de los indios. - 1585-02-15 , Daroca. Real cédula al virrey de Nueva España para que provea lo que sea más conveniente sobre el daño que reciben en sus sementeras y granjerías los indios de Jilotepec por parte de los mestizos, mulatos y negros que van en guarda de sus ganados. - 1585-04-16 , Poblete. Real cédula a la Audiencia de México para que a petición de Antonio de Guevara, Pedro de Torres, Diego Téllez y Zacarías de Santiago, caciques de Tlaxcala, para que se guarde lo dispuesto en las ordenanzas sobre agostaderos respecto al número de ganado que cada estancia debe tener. - 1585-04-16 , Poblete. Real cédula al virrey y Audiencia de México para que a petición de Antonio de Guevara, Pedro de Torres, Diego Téllez y Zacarías de Santiago, caciques de Tlaxcala y de Diego Muñoz Camargo, su intérprete, provean lo más conveniente sobre las ordenanzas sobre agostaderos para que no reciban agravio metiendo el ganado en sus tierras hasta haber cogido sus legumbres. - 1586-04-13 , San Lorenzo el Real. Real cédula al Marqués de Villamanrique, virrey de Nueva España, ordenándole examinar la petición de los naturales de los pueblos de "Chachalentlán" y "Coabitlán" y sus sujetos, así como de otros, acerca de que no se permitiera a los oficiales, secretarios y ministros de justicia tener ganados, estancias ni granjerías, de lo que se derivaban daños para los indios, y que proveyera lo que conviniera, de manera que los naturales no recibieran más daño. - 1589-07-19 , San Lorenzo. Instrucción de gobierno a Luis de Velasco [y Castilla], virrey de Nueva España y presidente de la Audiencia de México. - Cartas y expedientes del virrey de Nueva España, vistos en el Consejo. - 1597-08-04. Carta del virrey Gaspar de Zúñiga Acevedo, conde de Monterrey. - Audiencia de Panamá - Consejo de Indias: Cartas y expedientes - Cartas y expedientes de la Audiencia de Panamá - Cartas y expedientes del presidente, oidores y fiscal de la Audiencia de Panamá - 1583-08-15 , Panamá. Carta de la Audiencia de Panamá.

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- 1584-06-04 , Panamá. Carta de la Audiencia de Panamá. - Audiencia de Santa Fe - Consejo de Indias: Cartas y expedientes - Consejo de Indias: Cartas y expedientes de cabildos seculares - Cartas y expedientes del cabildo secular de Cartagena - 1673-06-30 , Cartagena. Cabildos seculares: Audiencia de Santa Fe. - Audiencia de Santo Domingo - Registros de oficios: Isla de Santo Domingo. - Registro: Isla Española. - 1537-03-09 , Valladolid. Merced de ganado a la ciudad de Santo Domingo. - 1538-02-16 , Valladolid. Envío de ganado a Nueva España. - Audiencia de Quito - Consejo: Cartas y expedientes - Consejo: Cartas y expedientes de la Audiencia de Quito. - Cartas y expedientes de Presidentes y oidores de Quito. - 1601-04-04 , Quito. Sobre la comisión de Pedro Beloso en Cuenca.

V. Second selection of documents Archivo General de Indias Gobierno Indiferente General Registros generalísimos Registros Generalísimos 1528-06-30 , Monzón. Real Cédula al Gobernador o juez de residencia de la Isla de San Juan para que se informen si es cierto como dice Diego Muriel, vecino de dicha Isla y encargado de los indios que hay en una hacienda de la ribera de Toa, que en dicha hacienda se entrometen personas que llevan allí sus ganados, contraviniendo las ordenanzas de dicha Isla, y causando perjuicio a la citada hacienda; por lo que pide, que le señalen a esta hacienda de la ribera de Toa, una legua en derredor que le sirva de era para sus ganados, no pudiendo entrar ningunos otros en ella, y envíen dicha información al Consejo de Indias. Translation: 1528-06-30 , Monzón. Real Cédula to the Governor or judge in residence of the Island of San Juan, so that they inform if it is true, as Diego Muriel says, neighbour of such island and who is in charge of the indians in a ranch on the shores of the Toa river, who says that in this ranch people come and bring their cattle, contravening the laws of the island, and causing damage to the abovementioned ranch; for this he asks, that the shores of the river Toa are pointed out to the ranch, one league that serves for their cattle, not allowing anyone else to come inside of it, and that such information is sent to the Consejo de Indias. Audiencia de Guadalajara Consejo: Cartas y expedientes

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Consejo: Cartas y expedientes de la Audiencia de Guadalajara. Cartas Expedientes Presidente Oidores 1607 (probable). Traslado de auto acordado de la Audiencia de Guadalajara de 5 de julio de 1595 para que los dueños de ganados los traigan con guarda y no les hagan daños a los indios en sus sementeras. Translation: 1607 (probably). Copy of judicial decree of the Audiencia de Guadalajara of the 5 of July 1595 so that the owners of cattle bring it with guards and that they do not hurt the indians in their planted fields. Audiencia de México Registros de oficio y partes Registros de oficio y partes: Nueva España 1531-08-17 , Ávila. Real cédula a la Audiencia de México para que no saque más de la villa de Santiesteban y provincia de Pánuco yeguas, vacas, ovejas y plantas que fueren necesarios para su proveimiento, procurando que no deje de perpetuar en dicha villa y provincia los citados ganados y plantas. Translation: 1531-08-17 , Ávila. Real cédula to the Audiencia de México so that no more mares, cows, sheep and plants that are necessary for the sustainment of the villa of Santiesteban, ensuring that the abovementioned cattle and plants perpetuate.

1538-04-08 , Valladolid. Real cédula a la Audiencia de México para que haga justicia en la solicitud de Doña Isabel, hija de Moctezuma, que se queja de que el marqués del Valle y otras personas han hecho en tierra de los indios, pueblo de Tacuba, cuya encomienda ella tiene, ciertos molinos en los cuales tienen gallinas y puercos y bueyes y caballos que comen las sementeras de los dichos indios de que reciban mucho daño, por lo que suplica se mande que en los dichos molinos no hubiesen las dichas gallinas ni puercos ni bueyes ni caballos sueltos. Translation: 1538-04-08 , Valladolid. Real cédula to the Audiencia de México so that justice is served in the request done by Doña Isabel, daughter of Moctezuma, who complains that the marquis del Valle and other people have done, in the land of indians in the town of Tacuba, encomienda that she has, certain windmills in which they have chickens and pigs and oxen and horses that eat the planted crops of such indians who receive much damage, by which she implores that in such windmills there are no such free roaming chickens nor pigs nor oxen nor horses.

1549-10-09, Valladolid. Real Cédula a la Audiencia de México para que provean que se remedie el daño que hace el ganado a las sementeras y labranzas de los indios, pues se comen sus cosechas y los hieren y matan. Translation: 1549-10-09, Valladolid. Real Cédula to the Audiencia de México so that they make sure that the damage that cattle does to the planted crops and farmlands of the indians is remedied, because they eat their harvest and hurt them and kill them.

1550-03-24 (known) , Valladolid. Real Cédula a la Audiencia de México para que provean que las estancias ganaderas se concedan donde no puedan provocar daño a los indios y si se hubiesen de dar, que estén apartadas de los pueblos de los indios para que los ganados no hagan daño a sus maizales y sementeras. Translation: 1550-03-24 (known), Valladolid. Real cédula to the Audiencia de México so that they judge that the cattle farms are admitted where they cannot harm the indigenous people and that, if 117 they are given, that they are away from the villages of the indigenous people, so that the cattle does not hurt their cornfields and planted crops.

1550-04-24, Valladolid. Carta de [Juan de] Sámano, [secretario del Consejo de Indias], a Luis de Velasco, que va como virrey, dándole cuenta del envío de una serie de despachos para Nueva España y Perú. Translation: 1550-04-24 , Valladolid. Letter from Juan de Sámano, secretary of the Consejo de indias, to Luis de Velasco, who goes as viceroy, giving him an account of a series of communiqués to New Spain and Perú.

1550-05-02 , Valladolid. Real cédula a la Audiencia de México, confirmando otra de 24 de marzo de 1550, para que las estancias de ganados se muden allí donde no perjudiquen a los indios. Translation: 1550-05-02 , Valladolid. Real cédula to the Audiencia de México, confirming another one from March 24 1550, so that the cattle ranches are moved where they do not harm indigenous people.

1550-05-04, Valladolid. Carta de Juan de Sámano, [secretario del Consejo de Indias], a Luis de Velasco, que va como virrey, dándole cuenta del envío de una serie de despachos para Nueva España. Translation: 1550-05-04 , Valladolid. Letter from Juan de Sámano [secretary of the Consejo de Indias], to Luis de Velasco, who goes as viceroy, giving him an account of a series of communiqués to New Spain.

1550-05-07 , Valladolid. Real cédula al licenciado [Hernando] Gómez de Santillán, oidor de la Audiencia de México, aumentándole por un año el plazo de 6 meses que tienen los oidores para deshacerse de sus ganados y granjerías. Translation: 1550-05-07 , Valladolid. Real cédula to the laywer [Hernando] Gómez de Santillán, oidor of the Audiencia de México, increasing by 1 year the period of 6 months that the oidores have to get rid of their cattle and husbandries.

1551-09-04 , Valladolid. Real cédula a [Luis de Velasco y Ruiz de Alarcón], virrey de Nueva España para que se informe y provea lo que considere conveniente en relación con la queja de los indios del pueblo de Tepecoculco sobre que el ganado mayor introducido por los pobladores españoles es muy dañino para el cultivo del pueblo. Translate: 1551-09-04 , Valladolid. Real cédula to [Luis de Velasco y Ruiz de Alarcón], viceroy of New Spain, so that it is informed and decided whatever is considered convenient in regards to the complaint of the indigenous people of the village of Tepecoculco, regarding that the cattle introduced by the Spanish villagers is very harmful to the farming of the village.

1568-06-07 , Aranjuez. Instrucción de gobierno a Martín Enríquez, virrey de Nueva España y presidente de la Audiencia de México. Translation: 1568-06-07 , Aranjuez. Government instructions to Martín Enríquez, viceroy of New Spain and president of the Audiencia de México. 118

Comment: Orders no. 19 and no. 20: 19. That the cattle ranches of Spanish settlers do not harm the planted crops of indigenous people. 20. That the cattle ranches of Spanish settlers are not in the irrigation lands where the indigenous people can plant wheat.

1576-02-20 , Madrid. Real cédula al virrey de Nueva España para que haga disponga lo que considere acerca delo que pide Juan Velázquez de Salazar en nombre de la ciudad de Los Ángeles [Puebla], sobre el agostadero de sus ganados, sin perjuicio de las sementeras y de los indios. Translation: 1576-02-20 , Madrid. Real cédula to the viceroy of New Spain so that it he decrees what he considers about what Juan Velásquez de Salazar, in the name of the city of Los Ángeles [Puebla], is asking for, regarding the pasture of their cattle, without harming the planted crops and the indigenous people.

1585-02-15 , Daroca. Real cédula al virrey de Nueva España para que provea lo que sea más conveniente sobre el daño que reciben en sus sementeras y granjerías los indios de Jilotepec por parte de los mestizos, mulatos y negros que van en guarda de sus ganados. Translation: 1585-02-15 , Daroca. Real cédula to the viceroy of New Spain so that he decides whatever is most convenient in regards to the damage that the indigenous people of Jilotepec are receiving in their planted crops and ranches by the mestizos, mulatos and negros that go guarding their cattle.

1585-04-16, Poblet. Real cédula a al virrey de Nueva España y la Audiencia de México para que vean las ordenanzas que han de hacer los indios principales de la provincia de Tlaxcala, con el fin de que sus sementeras y granjerías no reciban daño de los bueyes y mulas de las carretas que pasan por ellas. Translation: 1585-04-16 , Poblet. Real cédula to the viceroy of New Spain and the Audiencia de México so that they see the ordinances that the principal indians of the province of Tlaxcala are doing, so that their planted crops and profits do not take damage from the oxen and mules of the carriages that pass by them.

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1585-04-16 , Poblet. Real cédula to the Audiencia de México so that they decide on what the indigenous people of Tlaxcala ask for, so that the boundary makers are changed, and that the houses at the farms and caballerías that were taken without a license, are demolished.

1585-04-16 , Poblet. Real cédula al virrey de Nueva España y la Audiencia de México para que vean las ordenanzas que han de hacer los indios de Tlaxcala sobre la proliferación de ganados en aquellas tierras. Translation: 1585-04-16 , Poblet. Real cédula to the viceroy of New Spain and to the Audiencia de México, so that they see the ordinances that the indigenous people of Tlaxcala are to do in regards to the proliferation of cattle in those lands.

1585-04-16 , Poblete. Real cédula a la Audiencia de México para que a petición de Antonio de Guevara, Pedro de Torres, Diego Téllez y Zacarías de Santiago, caciques de Tlaxcala, para que se guarde lo dispuesto en las ordenanzas sobre agostaderos respecto al número de ganado que cada estancia debe tener. Translation: 1585-04-16 , Poblete. Real cédula to the Audiencia de México so that, as petitioned by Antonio de Guevara, Pedro de Torres, Diego Téllez and Zacarías de Santiago, caciques of Tlaxcala, so that what is decreed in the ordinances regarding pastures and the number of cattle that each plot of land is to have, is respected.

1585-04-16 , Poblete. Real cédula al virrey y Audiencia de México para que a petición de Antonio de Guevara, Pedro de Torres, Diego Téllez y Zacarías de Santiago, caciques de Tlaxcala y de Diego Muñoz Camargo, su intérprete, provean lo más conveniente sobre las ordenanzas sobre agostaderos para que no reciban agravio metiendo el ganado en sus tierras hasta haber cogido sus legumbres. Translation: 1585-04-16, Poblete. Real cédula to the viceroy and the Audiencia de México so that, as petitioned by Antonio de Guevara, Pedro de Torres, Diego Téllez and Zacarías de Santiago, caciques of Tlaxcala and of Diego Muñoz Camargo, their interpreter, decide what is most convenient on the ordinances about pasture lands so that they do not receive any harm by putting the cattle in their lands, until they have picked up their legumes.

1586-04-13 , San Lorenzo. Real cédula al Marqués de Villamanrique, virrey de Nueva España, ordenándole examinar la petición de los naturales de los pueblos de "Chachalentlán" y "Coabitlán" y sus sujetos, así como de otros, acerca de que no se permitiera a los oficiales, secretarios y ministros de justicia tener ganados, estancias ni granjerías, de lo que se derivaban daños para los indios, y que proveyera lo que conviniera, de manera que los naturales no recibieran más daño. Translation: 1586-04-13, San Lorenzo. Real cédula to the marquis of Villamanrique, viceroy of New Spain, ordering him to examine the petition of the natives of the villages of “Chachalentlán” and “Coabitlán” and their subjects, as well as others, regarding that the officials, secretaries and ministers of justice are not allowed to have cattle, ranches or planted crops, which derived in damages to the indigenous people, and that it is decided what is convenient, so that the natives do not receive any more damage.

1589-07-19 , San Lorenzo. Instrucción de gobierno a Luis de Velasco [y Castilla], virrey de Nueva España y presidente de la Audiencia de México. 120

Translation: 1589-07-19 , San Lorenzo. Instruction of government to Luis de Velasco [y Castilla], viceroy of New Spain and president of the Audiencia de México. Comment: Orders no. 19 and no. 20 are relevant: 19. That the cattle ranches of Spanish settlers do not harm the planted crops of indigenous people. 20. That the cattle ranches of Spanish settlers are not in the irrigation lands where the indigenous people can plant wheat.

1602-05-15 , Aranjuez. Real cédula al virrey de Nueva España y la Audiencia de México para que hagan justicia breve y sumariamente sobre lo que piden los indios de la ciudad y provincia de Texcoco de no recibir daño ni agravio en sus sementeras por la abundancia de bueyes, caballos, mulas y otros ganados menores que se las comen y destruyen. Translation: 1602-05-15 , Aranjuez. Real cédula to the viceroy of New Spain and the Audiencia de México so that they do justice briefly and summarily on what the indians of the city and province of Texcoco ask, that they do not receive damage or grievance in their planted crops by the abundance of oxen, horses, mules and other minor cattle that eat and destroy them.

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