Alternative Report for the CERD Review of Spain
submitted by the Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group
to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD)
89th Session / April-May 2016
3 April 2016
Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group
Alternative Report
UN CERD 89th Session: Review of Spain
Apache Ndé Nneé Statement on Apache Ndee Nnee Access to Justice and Redress
The Apache Ndé Nneé Working Group is a collaborative of Apache peoples and non-Apache friends who
have unified our expertise in the fields of culture, law, history, philosophy, arts, economics, politics, health,
social welfare, education, spirituality, science, and much more. We endeavor to provide the truth and use
our expertise to redress for past and ongoing occurring grievances that Apaches have faced historically and
continue to face on a daily basis. We utilize the United Nations and international treaty bodies and
mechanisms to promote the specific and general welfare and well-being of the Peoples in order to bring
about harmony and balance within our own beings and belonging. We are re-establishing our permanent
roles as Apache Ndé Nneé in the international political arena, in accordance with our understanding of
Apache Ndé Nneé truth, laws, oral tradition, oral history, historical memory, inter-generational knowledge
and community documentation and archiving systems. The Apache Ndé Nneé system of analyzing
colonialism and colonial power has been under development since first contact, post 1492. The Apache
Ndé Nneé Working Group exercise Indigenous self-determination and sovereignty to enable justice for all
Ndé Nneé peoples and future generations to come.
This is an emergent Apache Ndé Nneé framework to establish new justice, peace, and redress processes.
The present utilization of the United Nations’ systems is one of diverse approaches to address and receive
full redress and justice for all The People.
-Michael Paul Hill with Margo Tamez, Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group
1
Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group
Alternative Report
UN CERD 89th Session: Review of Spain
Table of Contents
Key Issues……….............................................................................................................................................3
Recommendation………..................................................................................................................................3
Introduction
India Reed Bowers, B.A. LL.M with Margo Tamez, M.F.A. Ph.D, Lipan Apache..........................4
Spain’s Legacy of Participation in the Doctrine of Discovery in Ndee-Nnee Territories in the
United States’ American Southwest
Lorraine Garcia, Chihene Nde……………..……………………….……………………….……...7
Surviving Three Cycles of Colonialism: A Brief History of the Ndé People, 1700-1850
Matthew Babcock, Ph.D…………………...……………………………………………………....15
2
Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group
Alternative Report
UN CERD 89th Session: Review of Spain
Key Issues: Spain in Apache-Ndé-Nneé Territories1 – History and Legacy
1.
Spain’s corroboration in implementation with Holy See of its Inter Caetera and Papal Bulls in Doctrine
of Discovery as mercenarios and militarios.
2.
Spain’s development and implementation of the ideologies of Imperialism and Colonialism in and
affecting Apache-Ndé-Nneé territories and remaining today in the now United States Southwest,
Mexico and the U.S.-Mexico Border Wall.
3.
Spain’s implementation of the Recopilations de Leyes los Reynos de los Indias 1680, establishing
colonial towns and settlements and using Indigenous Peoples in those areas as natural resources i.e.
enslavement.
4.
Results of the Leyes (Laws): forceful and planned and calculated domination over Indigenous Peoples,
including the Apache-Ndé-Nneé, in their own lands by way of occupation, subjugation, separation,
enslavement, trade, commerce, and also so-called treaties of friendship, peace, compacts and
agreements with Nde-Nnee peoples in their lands/territories resulting in further domination by colonial
forces including Spain and the remaining legacies therein.
5.
Legacy to this day: Ndee-Nnee peoples live still as an occupied, subjugated, separated people; many
are homeless and others confined on United States' Federally-run Reservations. These situations are a
direct result of foreign treaties stemming from Spain, Nueva Espana, and Mexico Eras and the
constraints of present-day U.S-Mexico-business-foreign occupation of Apache-Ndé-Nneé Peoples,
histories, decision-making, worldview and lands.
Recommendations
1.
For the Spain to participate in a Historical Dialogue with the Apache-Ndé-Nneé regarding the
path to justice, repair and healing for damages done and continuing as a result of Spanish colonialism in
Apache-Ndé-Nneé territories, as a form of “eliminating racial discrimination in all its forms and to
guarantee the right of everyone, without distinction as to race, colour, or national or ethnic origin, to
equality before the law, notably in the enjoyment of the following rights: (a) The right to equal treatment
before the tribunals and all other organs administering justice”2
In this era of Truth Commissions3 and Restorative and Reparative Justice,4 and especially in regards to
Indigenous Peoples and all peoples under colonial domination and in light of Indigenous and Human
Rights, ending all forms of decolonization, the returning of stolen lands, revoking of discriminatory and
racist laws and policies, and preventative and punitive measures regarding ethnocide and genocide,
accountability of Spain for colonial and colonizing actions in pursuit of land acquisition, power,
domination, enslavement, servitude, wealth and world influence is a necessity for Apache-Ndé-Nneé
recovery.
1
For additional description of Apache-Ndé-Nneé Territories, see Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group’s Shadow Report
submitted to CERD at its 88th session in review of the Holy See, November 2015,
http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CERD/Shared%20Documents/VAT/INT_CERD_NGO_VAT_22151_E.pdf.
2
CERD Article 5(a)
3
See for example: UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues: Study on the rights of indigenous peoples and truth
commissions and other truth-seeking mechanisms on the American continent, UNPFII 12th session, Provisional agenda
item 6, Discussion on the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples, 14 February 2013, Para. 6, E/C.19/2013/13
4
See for example: Study by the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Restorative justice,
indigenous juridical systems and access to justice for indigenous women, children and youth, and persons with
disabilities, EMRIP 7th session, Item 5 of the provisional agenda: Continuation of the study on access to justice in the
promotion and protection of the rights of indigenous peoples, , 25 June 2014, A/HRC/EMRIP/2014/3/Rev.1
3
Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group
Alternative Report
UN CERD 89th Session: Review of Spain
Introduction
India Reed Bowers, B.A. LL.M.5 with Margo Tamez, Ph.D.6
“The States Parties to this Convention,
…Considering that the United Nations has condemned colonialism and all practices of segregation
and discrimination associated therewith, in whatever form and wherever they exist, and that the
Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples of 14 December
1960 (General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV)) has affirmed and solemnly proclaimed the
necessity of bringing them to a speedy and unconditional end…”
…Convinced that any doctrine of superiority based on racial differentiation is scientifically false,
morally condemnable, socially unjust and dangerous, and that there is no justification for racial
discrimination, in theory or in practice, anywhere…
…Resolved to adopt all necessary measures for speedily eliminating racial discrimination in all its
forms and manifestations”
-International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD)
CERD Article 5 with special attention to Art. 5(a)7 Access to Justice
The Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group presents this Alternative Report to address the situation of
discrimination surrounding and resulting from the lack of redress for and ongoing legacy of Spain’s
involvement in the colonization of the Apache-Ndé-Nneé People, territories, peoples, lifeways, and more,
through Spain’s various forms of slavery, subjugation, abuse, murder, domination, dividing, conquering,
theft and generations-long damage against the Apache-Ndé People therein.
Spain’s historical obligation to participate in redress and repair of the Apache-Ndé-Nneé is deep and
weighs heavily on Apache-Ndé-Nneé current life and reality. The notion of hispanism8 is a descriptor for
the Spanish identity and ideology that has violently displaced native identity and ideology, raping native
languages, women, elders, relations, cultures, social fabrics, and relationships with the natural world and
life, as well as the societal world in general, in how they are perceived and in relation to the Apache-Ndé.
The strategic colonizing of Apache-Ndé-Nneé territories by Spain, significantly including but not limited to
by the ‘String of Pearls of the Lower Rio Grande’9 design of José de Escandón, documented murderer of
indigenous peoples and the organizer of their mass killings and displacement as well as their forced
conversions. José de Escandón - deemed ‘Father of the Valley’ by many and a signification actor in
colonization of Apache-Ndé-Nneé territories and people - whose bronze statue was erected just this 2014 in
5
Founder & Director of the International Organization for Self-Determination and Equality (IOSDE); Independent
Freelance Consultant; Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group Member.
6
University of British Columbia, Okanagan Territory; Lipan Apache Band of Texas, Konitsaaiigokiyaa Nde' (Big
Water Peoples' Country); Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group Member.
7
“States Parties undertake to prohibit and to eliminate racial discrimination in all its forms and to guarantee the right of
everyone, without distinction as to race, colour, or national or ethnic origin, to equality before the law, notably in the
enjoyment of the following rights: (a) The right to equal treatment before the tribunals and all other organs
administering justice”
8
See article by Dr. Margo Tamez in the Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group’s Shadow Report submitted to CERD at its
88th session in review of the Holy See,
http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CERD/Shared%20Documents/VAT/INT_CERD_NGO_VAT_22151_E.pdf; for
more information see, for example: Mabel Moraña, Ideologies of Hispanism, Vanderbilt University Press, 2005,
available in part at
https://books.google.ca/books/about/Ideologies_of_Hispanism.html?id=TzHIWtvQbLsC&redir_esc=y
9
See Tamez in the Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group’s Shadow Report,
http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CERD/Shared%20Documents/VAT/INT_CERD_NGO_VAT_22151_E.pdf. See
also for example https://riograndeguardian.com/l%C3%B3pez-the-string-of-pearls-of-the-lower-rio-grande/
4
Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group
Alternative Report
UN CERD 89th Session: Review of Spain
front of the Student Academic Center at the University of Texas Pan-American, perpetuating the colonial
dominance myth as achievement.10 The result of Spain’s colonization is a lasting legacy that Spanish ways
of thinking, being, doing, and knowing are supreme to the subjugated, forming a rooted discrimination so
permeating that only direct addressing of, redress, reparation and change can alter the indoctrinated cycle
of abuse.
The adjoining articles in this Alternative Report provide a sampling of historical documentation by both
Apache-Ndé-Nneé and non-native historians on the brutal subjugation of the Apache-Ndé-Nneé by Spain
that continues to deeply affect and dictate the lives of the Apache-Ndé-Nneé today, to the benefit of
colonial and still-colonizing States in-tandem, not least the United States, the Vatican and the Holy See,
and of course, the focus of this report, Spain. This Alternative Report can be considered crucially interwoven in historical and contextual relation with the Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group’s Shadow Report
submitted to CERD at its 88th session in review of the Holy See.11 The Holy See and Spain colonized
Apache-Ndé-Nneé territories and peoples in corroboration. The legacy of each today is a brutal intergenerational reality expressed and lived by the Apache-Ndé who currently exist under the racist
oppressions within their homeland impacted by Spain’s colonial legacy, and through a plurality of
successor states, but also impacted by Spain’s continuing presence—culturally, economically, and
politically--in the unceded and unsurrendered territory of the Ndé. Hispanicism and Spain’s impact
dominate Ndé in virtually all aspects on life, as detailed in part in both reports.
Spain’s investment portfolios that continue to benefit from racism-based policy and colonial laws first
created by Spain in Apache-Ndé-Nneé territories are the direct continuation of forced subjugation toward
the Apache-Ndé-Nneé. To this day, non-Apache-Ndé persons on the Texas-Mexico border hold Spanish
Crown land grants in Apache-Ndé-Nneé territories,12 and Spain maintains silver and mineral interests in
Apache-Ndé-Nneé territories, all without the Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) of the indigenous
Apache-Ndé Peoples. These realities are only a sampling of the ongoing colonization resulting from
Spanish colonialism in Apache lands - a colonization perpetuated not only continue to subjugate and as a
result deeply impoverish and, literally, poison the Apache-Ndé-Nneé and their historic and traditional
lands, and this cultures, sovereignty, territorial and cultural integrities, relationships and spirits, but to
continue to benefit from yet-to-be-legally-addressed world colonialisms; a direct continuation of Spain’s
colonial relations to the Holy See in the conquest of the ‘Americas’. In planned and agreed-to corroboration
with the Holy See, Spain introduced and induced subjugation to the Ndé-Nneé via its relationship with the
Catholic Church for the sake of colonial domination- taking Ndé-Nneé spirit and lands, imposing slavery,
and de-indegenizing the Apache-Ndé Peoples, an ultimate form of calculated discrimination against, and
cultural eradication of, a people. The fact that Spanish Mission sites are currently being established as
UNESCO World Heritage Sites, despite the Lipan Apache Ndé written protests to UNESCO (U.S.A.)
headquarters in New York, and despite the physical and intellectual exclusion of Apache-Ndé-Nneé
meaningful participation in the process within the unceded territories, serves as example to the deep-seated
continuous nature of re-colonization, re-traumatization and domination as ideologies and forced existences
onto Apache-Ndé-Nneé peoples, communities, families and territories. So long as there is no true and selfdetermined redress for the Apache-Ndé, and the Spanish Mission UNESCO World Heritage Sites are
allowed to go forward as planned, without the FPIC of the Apache-Ndé-Nneé peoples, the CERD then is a
hollow forum for Indigenous peoples who are excluded from exercising rights and gaining access to
meaningful justice.
Just as the Holy See must meet with Indigenous Peoples, to discuss its racist colonial legacy and decisionmaking,13 to discuss redress and ongoing violations by the Holy See that are racist and discriminatory, and
not least with the Apache-Ndé-Nneé who called for such action at the CERD 88th session review of the
10
see for example http://www.utpa.edu/news/2014/11/unveiling-of-new-building-and-statue-nov-18-marks-historicday-at-utpa.htm
11
Dr. Babcock’s article is contained in both reports, Ms. Garcia’s article in variations in each; see
http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CERD/Shared%20Documents/VAT/INT_CERD_NGO_VAT_22151_E.pdf for the
Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group’s Shadow Report submitted to CERD at its 88th session in review of the Holy See.
12
See for example http://www.glo.texas.gov/history/archives/forms/files/history-of-texas-public-lands.pdf
13
CERD/C/VAT/CO/16-23, paras. 16-17.
5
Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group
Alternative Report
UN CERD 89th Session: Review of Spain
Holy See, Spain, too, must face its past and its ongoing colonial legacy against Indigenous Peoples and the
Apache-Ndé-Nneé.
Spain must face its victims; to not do so is an act of racial discrimination in the scope of access to justice;
such discrimination is a continued colonization itself via the notion that only some persons and peoples
who seek, desire or need justice deserve its repair and change, while the rest must perish starving for peace.
This conversation between the Apache-Ndé-Nneé and Spain is long overdue.
6
Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group
Alternative Report
UN CERD 89th Session: Review of Spain
Spain’s Legacy of Participation in the Doctrine of Discovery
in Ndee-Nnee Territories in the United States’ American Southwest14
Lorraine F. Garcia15
In the United States’ American Southwest, Spain and its colonial country of Nueva España, known today
as the Republic of Mexico, in their historical past recognized and acknowledged Ndee-Nnee peoples and
their traditional homelands for approximately four hundred years. This long-standing perpetual recognition
and acknowledgment were contextualized by written and recorded documents of maps, military reports,
church records, laws, and decrees that stemmed from the Doctrine of Discovery contained in the Papal Bull
Inter Caetera issued by Pope Alexander VI on May 4th of 1493. Spain’s participation as the Spanish Rulers
of military occupation and domination along with the dominion of Roman Catholicism Canon Rule and
Law; specifically Spanish Emperor Philip II’s 1573 New Ordinances and the Recopilacion de Leyes los
Reynos de los Indias of many laws that evolved from the Laws of the Indies, created the ideologies of
imperialism and colonialism that have taken root in today’s American Southwest and have encroached
upon and voided Ndee-Nnee peoples’ freedoms of lifeways of spiritualism of oneness. Spain’s legacy of
participation in the Doctrine of Discovery in Ndee-Nnee territories in the United States’ American
Southwest has left the Ndee-Nnee an occupied, subjugated, separated and, for many Ndee-Nnee, a
homeless peoples in their perpetual sacred and traditional homelands.
“The Spaniards, to whom Indians are entrusted [encomendados], should seek with great
care that these Indians be settled into towns…so that the Indians can be instructed into
the Christian doctrine and live in good order.” Spanish King Philip II 1573 (Crouch,
Mundigo 258)
In his 1630 memorial, the custodian of conversions of New Mexico’s missions, Fray Alonso de Benavides
wrote of meeting with Apache (Ndee-Nnee) leader Sanaba numerous times. Fray Benavides also divulged
in that 1630 Memorial; even though he suspected there were at least 30,000 Ndee-Nnee people, “And
although these Apaches are very warlike, they are more to be trusted…and we pass by them with less
anxiety” (Ayers 16). The Laws of the Indies were already implemented in Ndee-Nnee lands when Fray
Benavides passed through them and until 1624; Spanish Emperor’s Philip II’s 1573 New Ordinances within
the Laws of the Indies called for settlement in the Indian population with intentions of conversion and
‘protection’ of those converted Indians, in conjunction with Rome’s Catholic Church’s (hired) mercenaries
appointed by Spanish Rulers as Castilian Spanish conquistadors and ‘protectors’. Spanish Emperor Philip
II was precise in the 1573 Ordinances of Pacifications 138-148, that the Spanish conquerors’ appointments
were as pacifiers to Indian populations; to get to know those Indians on whose lands they settled and their
language, their [lords] leaders, their strengths, weaknesses and their conflicts with other Indian people. The
thoroughness of the Ordinance’s 10-point Pacification was to see which Indian populations could possibly
be groomed and ready for the conversions by the Roman friars and priests (Crouch, Mundigo 259, 260).
Furthermore, “The Ordinances Concerning Discoveries, issued in 1573, forbade unauthorized operations
against independent Indian peoples” (Editors, Encyclopedia Britannica 2016); such operations occurred
with authorization.
So independent and numerous were the Ndee-Ndee peoples in their logic of geographies, diplomacies of
leaderships and familiar respectability in attending to their self-sufficiencies and self-accountabilities, that
dependency on Spanish ‘protection’ from any Indian enemies was unnecessary, so conversion was also
unattainable. The name placed upon Ndee-Nnee peoples by their enemies spoke volumes to who they were
and their strength in numbers. A name that The Spanish would placate on a 1705 map in Latin showing the
Ndee-Nnee lands as a Kingdom: Apacheria, Sive, Terra Apachorum. The name enemies of the Ndee-Nnee
identified them with was Apache meaning Enemy. Thus, The Spanish documented their lands as Lands of
The Apache Kingdom, also, Lands of the Enemy Peoples. The designation as a Kingdom further reflected
14
Draft for use in the Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group Shadow Report to UN CERD for reviews of Spain; not for
other use without author’s permission.
15
Ndee-Nnee Historical Researcher; Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group Member.
7
Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group
Alternative Report
UN CERD 89th Session: Review of Spain
Map 1: 1705 Spanish Map in Latin depicting in center Apacheria..Sive..Terra Apachorum
the leadership process of the Ndee-Nnee of which men were designated by a concession of women and men
of their respective family clan groups to be guided representatives for them in all areas of matters of
lifeways, conflicts and spirituality. Not having one person to rule over the whole Ndee-Nnee Nation like a
King or Queen was not pertinent, because Ndee-Nnee people in the past as today believed in a monotheistic
concept; in a spiritual belief of a one-God concept who created all human and animals and living beings.
These organized concepts of a one-God creator of all and leadership roles alluded to true sovereignty over
self to Ndee-Nnee people and in perpetuity to their lands as they would for four hundred years in Spanish
and other European maps.
In 1685, then-custodian Fray Alonso de Posada wrote in a report that the Ndee-Nnee in New Mexico were
boastful, fearless and constantly warring with The Spanish and other indios east of the Rio Grande and that
“They have made many attacks from prepared ambushes on Indian pueblos, killing atrociously the
warriors, carrying off the women and children alive, considering them as legitimate captives” (Posada,
1685). Over 90 Decrees were created by 1670 New Mexico Spanish Governor Bernardo Lopez de
Mendizabàl that justified the taking of captives as war reprisals, which resulted in the establishment of the
legitimization of slavery that had begun in the 1650’s (Carlisle 95, 96). Peaceful Ndee-Nnee peoples were
threatened by these new decrees and the trust they had shown Fray Benavides and their accompanying
Spanish protectors; their Spanish successors would throw away that trust to murderous ways and slave
raids. These 90 decrees were the results of the power play of The Spanish to expand their overseas
territories because of economic gain that could be easily begotten by the European competitive slave trade.
With a new Spanish Emperor and a Century gone by since Spanish Emperor Philip’s reign, the
Recopilacion de Leyes los Reynos de los Indias1681 replaced his 1573 New Ordinances. This new Law of
the Indies was “a collection of pre-existing laws to be followed in the Castilian overseas colonies and the
primary source of Spanish colonial law” (Miguel-Stearns, Filiu, Kim-Prieto, 308).
The Ndee-Nnee had not resigned to Catholic conversion attempts, and as copper and silver were discovered
in their homelands spanning across today’s four American states of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and
Texas and the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua, the desire for the Spanish to gain access to and
occupy these areas was enacted through colonialism and the imperialistic ways of war waged by any means
necessary. Spain’s 1680 recompilations laws and the numerous decrees that evolved out of the
establishment of settlements, towns and their local governments’ constitutions and courts were the legal
avenues to achieve the horrendous atrocities that were set upon Ndee-Nnee peoples. This included using
8
Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group
Alternative Report
UN CERD 89th Session: Review of Spain
the Indian population in colonial settlements and towns as natural resources by way of forced labor thru
enslavement.
The insert of Map 2 of the Roman Catholic Holy See Map below began in 1751 and was completed and
recorded in Rome in 1754. It documents the Ndee-Nnee peoples as Apaches Gentiles; meaning, conversion
in their lands had not happened in the almost two hundred years since Spanish King Philip II’s 1537 New
Ordinances contained in the Laws of the Indies. The initial campaign against Ndee-Nnee peoples by the
Spanish was legitimizing slavery.
Map 2: Roman Catholic Holy See Map 1751-1754 Depicting Rome’s Missions in the lands of converted Indian
populations from North America to South America stemming from King Philip II’s 1573 New Ordinances contained in
the Laws of the Indies.
Map 3: Insert of Map 2: Upper Left Apaches Gentiles
At contact, The Spanish brought The European Overseas Slave Trade to the American Southwest and
legalized it in Santa Fe, New Mexico with The Mendizabàl Decrees of the 1670’s. For the search of riches
to begin in Ndee-Nnee lands, the people that had been deemed peaceful had to be broken down. The
Spanish military did exactly that and waged war began with the search for riches and slave raids. The first
9
Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group
Alternative Report
UN CERD 89th Session: Review of Spain
to be found was surface copper in New Mexico and The Mendizabàl Decrees heightened the slave raids
into Ndee-Nnee lands. These slave raids forever decimated and changed family structure not only by
separation and subjugation but by the kidnapping, capturing, trading and selling of Apache people, and
Apaches whose families were obliterated in massacres would forever be enslaved in Spanish households, as
were their offspring and every generation thereafter in servitude, until their death or until the end of
slavery, as is the recorded example below:
6 Abr. 1729 Antonia, Apachi, sirvienta de Diego Trujillo
20 Abr. 1729 Antonia, Apachi, sirvienta de Cristobal Varela
27 Feb. 1733 Joseph de Lara, Apache, 25 años
16 Jul 1736 Maria, Apachi criada de Manuel Montoya
3 Oct. 1736 Margarita, Apachi criada de Diego del Rio
3 Mar. 1744 Maria, Apachi, parbula, hija de Rosa ,
Apachi sirvienta de Isabel Romero
21 Abr. 1744 Juana Maria, parbula, hija de Otero Naranjo
(mestizo, sirviente de Don Manuel Valiran) y Francisca Telles, Apache india
21 Sep. 1744 Juana, Apachi sirvienta de Gregoria Varela
3 Jul. 1757 Maria, parbula, Apache huerfana de Joseph Apodaca
9 Oct. 1758 Maria, india, Apachi amanecio ahorcada en la casa de Domingo Apodaca
(Magdaleno)
To be taken as a slave was a very somber ordeal and so feared by an Ndee-Nee person that many deaths
such as the very last Ndee-Nnee (Apache) girl listed, death by hanging, by suicide, was the only resolve for
the many countless and unlisted Ndee-Nee throughout The Southwest. The actual numbers of Ndee-Nnee
people sold and born into slavery will never be known, but slavery affected Ndee-Nnee peoples for at least
more than three hundred and eighty years that can be calculated by church, military and state records. The
mission of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe Del Norte in Chihuahua, Mexico, just bordering El Paso, Texas
in the United States, is just one of numerous Catholic missions that recorded Ndee-Nnee as slaves and
servants in Spanish households (Magdaleno). Distrust of the Spanish and the Roman Catholic Church
would forever be ingrained in the minds and hearts of free Nde-Nnee peoples, because they would
eventually do all that could be done at such a horrific cost to attempt to save the enslaved and in servitude
Ndee-Nnee, from raids onto missions to attempt the rescues of enslaved people in the very beginnings, to
even bartering and trading them from proprietors of ranchos and haciendas; most often times to no avail.
By the end of 1790, Ndee-Nnee leaders resolved to treaties in the hopes of the return of their captive and
enslaved peoples.
The first established treaty was with Ndee-Nnee leaders from the Gila regions, spanning present-day
Arizona and New Mexico, in the form of the 1790 Treaty with Gila Apaches July 13, 1790 (Deloria,
DeMallie 136). This 1790 treaty was established for the barter and trade of Spanish captive per (Apache)
captive and to allow the Spanish to have access to Gila (Apache) traditional homelands in their extensive
regions. The taking of Ndee-Nnee leaders’ wives, children and family members seemingly became the
norm prior to 1790 in attempt to parlay with Ndee-Nnee leaders; to get their families back, leaders entered
into treaties. Unfortunately, for many Ndee-Nnee captives who were not of leadership families, some could
not be bartered back. Recorded in Spanish military records, specifically from the Janos Presidio, are the
letters and summons of field officers from Ndee-Nnee leaders as captiancillos, asking for the release of
their wives and families who had been taken as prisoners in raids, as seen in the 1790 list below:
•
•
•
•
•
Al sr. don Antonio Cordero; carta sobre oficio que se pasa al capitán don Manuel de
Casanova, sobre capitancillos indios y la india apacha prisionera mujer de Ysquielnocten
que se halla en San Buenaventura. (Chihuahua) [1l] 29 de marzo
Al sr. comandante de la compañía de Janos; carta sobre entregar al indio Guero una india
que hay se halla de las prisioneras. Cumpá. (Chihuahua) [1l] 22 de agosto
Nava: al sr. com. de Janos; carta sobre volver al capitancillo Tesegoslán sus dos sobrinos
en buena fe. Ayud. Insp. don Roque de Medina, Gandules. (Chihuahua) [1l] 1 de julio
NNava: al sr. com. de Janos; carta sobre las diligencias practicadas don los hijos del
capitancillo Pitsago. (Chihuahua) [1l] 1 de julio
Nava: al sr. don Manuel de Casanova; carta sobre no deber darse entero crédita a lo que
ha dicho el indio que se hizo prisionero en la campaña del Sargento Nicolás Madrid sobre
10
Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group
•
Alternative Report
UN CERD 89th Session: Review of Spain
junta que quedara haciendo el hijo del capitán Chiquito. Pueblo de Bacuachi, Sonora, ten.
cor. don Roque de Medina, Babispe. (Chihuahua) [2l] 31 de Agosto
Nava: al sr. don Manuel de Casanova; carta sobre haber llegado un indio hermano de
Tusegoslán. Rachería de Patatirante, ten. don José Ygnacio Escageda, capitancillo
Compá, Apaches. (Chihuahua) [1l] 8 de septiembre
The Economy of The Slave Trade proved too prosperous for The Spanish Economy to be readily given up.
Those who remained captives were sold into slavery and their offspring were born into servitude; the
supposed saving of their souls was more important to the Roman Catholic Church, so that they stayed in
servitude and enslaved on haciendas and ranchos. By the 1700’s, the first generations of Ndee-Nnee born
as slaves were systematically forced into arranged marriages to other Ndee-Nnee and non-Ndee-Nnee, as is
the documented and recorded in examples below:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Ene. 23, 1734 Nicolas de la Cruz, indio Apachi sirviente, de Capitán Don Joseph
Valentín de Aganza con Luisa Ana Chavez, HL Joseph Chavez y Maria Antonia,
sirvienta de Capitan Don Joseph Valentín de Aganza (Source 1D)
Ago. 11, 1734 Marcial Abiles, coyote con Gertrudis Velarde, india Apache
Ago.. 30, 1734 Francisco de Osuña, de Guadalajara, HL Salvador de la Vega y Maria
Rojas (Nicolas de Osuña, padrastro) con Isabel Olivares, Apache sirvienta de Don
Bernardino de Olivares (Source 4)
May 1, 1736 Nicolas Joseph Antonio Morales, mulatto esclavo, natural de Ciudad del
Guadalara, Padres no conocidos con Maria Ysidra, india Apache, sirvienta (Source 1A)
Feb. 3, 1737 Salvador Maria Subiate, Apachi sirviente con Maria Isidora, Apachi, criada,
viuda de Jose Antonio Nicolas, mulatto eslavo de Antonia Valverde (Source 4)
Ago. 29, 1737 Ventura Cortes, indio Apache sirviente de Don Nicolas de la Sierra, viudo
de Rosa Maria con Barbara, india Apache esclava de Don Antonio Tiburcio (Source 4)
Nov. 26, 1737 Antonio de la Cruz, Apachi sirviente con Asuncion, Suma, HL Leonicio
Guarachi (dfto) y Angela (Source 4) (Magdaleno)
There are many more documented Ndee-Nnee marriages and deaths throughout The United States’
Southwestern states other than the few listed in this paper, however the absence of recorded baptisms of
Apaches suggests that the Roman Catholic Church readily married and buried them but that actual Catholic
Conversion did not occur within the Ndee-Nnee slave and servant status. This separation and subjugation
further decimated Ndee-Nnee families religiously and spiritually, because they could not even practice in
disguise their Apache culture and traditions without reprisals of torture and or death while enslaved and in
servitude. Many Ndee-Nnee families endured one to two centuries of enslavement and servitude in Spanish
households, until Mexico gained its Independence from Spain and after Mexican President Vicente
Guerrero abolished slavery in his Decree of 1829 (Vincent); upon freedom during the short Mexican Era,
many Ndee-Nnee people would face and endure racism in the colonias of The U.S. Southwest as desinated
Apache genizaros.
While generations of Ndee-Nnee were enslaved, for two and a half centuries the non-enslaved lived
chaotically within the Spanish Rule of Occupation and Domination and the yolk of Rome’s Holy See of
Spiritual War of the Doctrine of Discovery, the Laws of the Indies and its Recopilacion de Leyes los
Reynos de los Indias 1680. Another campaign against Ndee-Nee peoples would be set upon those that had
not converted to Christianity and had not settled in Spanish colonial towns by the late 1700’s. Ndee-Nnee
peoples throughout The Southwest would be confined under peace treaties and agreements with Spain in
what was known then as peace establishments: Lands appointed to Ndee-Nnee peoples by the Spanish
government to live and receive rations of clothes, cloth, beef, corn, sugar, tobacco and for some,
agricultural seed and tools to become famers. These peace establishments were the forerunners of today’s
American Indian Reservations. When closely examined and analyzed they have direct links to Spanish
King Philip’s 1573 New Ordinances of Pacifications from the reference [encomendados] that made Indian
populations trustees on their own lands within the Doctrine of Discovery (Crouch Mundigo 258).
The Ndee Nnee people fought hard against the Spanish Military incursions and resisted Rome’s Christian
conversion. Most stayed at peace establishments under duress, hunger, safety, fear of enslavement and
sporadically at interval points in times for about thirty years 1790-1820 during Spanish occupation, about
thirty years 1820-1850 during Mexican occupation, and many still reside at these establishments now called
11
Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group
Alternative Report
UN CERD 89th Session: Review of Spain
American Indian Federal Reservations. Please see Dr. Matthew Babcock’s paper about these chaotic eras
contained within this report for an in-depth examination.
Many of today’s Ndee-Nnee descendants of the enslaved are landless and, in actuality, homeless because
The United States has deemed it a reality and many of them are those descendants that
were not of leadership families. Many of these descendants face identity crisis and feel they do not fit in the
normalcy of American societies. They are deemed white at birth but are viewed solely by looks, skin color
and supposedly racial identities in a land that is since Spanish and Catholic colonization solely based upon
race. Generations of Ndee-Nnee are lost in United States’ communities that express one’s racial identity on
fixed identity cards and applications.
The creation of racism and Native American Indian populations as trustees and inhabitants are parts of
Spain’s legacies in their intentional corroboration in The Papal Bulls’ Doctrine of Discovery in America.
This continues to harbor hatred and harm to those peoples and their cultures that were and are supposedly
indifferent. Although some scholars and written histories claim that the 1573 New Ordinances and
Recopilacion de Leyes los Reynos de los Indias 1680 have been rendered obsolete, those claims are so far
from the truth. Las Siete Partidas are included in the collective bodies of works of the Recopilacion, and
the Laws of the Indies are still being used in Southern states’ courts and constitutions (Miguel-Stearns
Filiu, Kim-Prieto, 308).
The United States and every country that has inherited from and through the Doctrine of Discovery and its
edicts, decrees and laws, also inherited its - The Doctrine of Discovery’s - Indian populations and uses
those inheritances against the Indian populations in turn. For instance:
•
•
Johnson v. M'Intosh 21 U.S. 543 (1823) "Indian inhabitants are to be considered merely
as occupants, to be protected, indeed while in peace, in the possession of their lands, but
to be deemed incapable of transferring absolute titles to others" (Nicely 3)
Cherokee Nation v. Georgia 30 U.S. l (1831) Establishes Indians as wards and the United
States government as a guardian (Nicely 3)
The Papal Bulls including the Inter Caetera and the resulting edicts of the Doctrine of Discovery, the Law
of the Indies, Spanish Emperor Philip II’s 1753 New Ordinances and the Recopilacion de Leyes los Reynos
de los Indias 1680 are living and breathing documents that today, as in the past, continue to reign over the
Ndee-Nnee and all other Indian populations in The United States of America. Some may argue that that is
so to make sure that Indian populations will always have their lands in perpetuity, but they are still merely
trustees on their lands, without having the say-so of what is being done to harm the land, when by colonial
law the United States and Mexico forever own that Indian land and regulates, for example, when lands can
be mined, used as chemical waste land as has been done in the past (and continues to leak poisons today),
sold and leased, and regulated as waterways and highways. Many traditional Ndee-Nnee homelands are in
federal, state and private holdings and are sacred lands connected spiritually as places of creation, birth,
ceremony, energies, medicinal, sustenance, and death. Many go unprotected and are inaccessible and are
destroyed or sacred items, petro glyphs, and remains are sold on black markets for profit nationally and
globally.
Spain’s legacy in the United States is inhumane; shackles are still cuffed to the legs and arms of Ndee-Nnee
peoples, yokes are still clasped around the necks of the peoples. Ndee-Nnee peoples still live under the
oppression of The Doctrine of Discovery and all edicts, ordinances, and laws that bind them to it as well as
the beneficiaries therein. Ndee-Nnee peoples hold Spain among colonial forces most accountable for these
past and present situations, and address and redress of these suppressions must be remedied by Spain and
with Spain who brought the devastating racist occupation and subjugation to Ndee-Nnee peoples.
Sources Cited
Ayer, Mrs. Edward E., trans., The Memorial of Fray Alonso de Benavides. 1630. pp, 16, 42, 68, Chicago: 1916; reprint,
Albuquerque: Horn and Wallace Publishers, 1965.
Carlisle, Jeffrey D. B.S. M.A., Spanish Relations With The Apache Nations, East Of The Rio Grande. pp, 95, 96.
12
Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group
UN CERD 89th Session: Review of Spain
Alternative Report
Doctor of Philosophy (History), University Of North Texas, May 2001.
Deloria, Vine Jr., DeMallie, Raymond J. Documents of American Diplomacy: Treaties, Agreements, and Conventions,
1777-1979 (Legal History of North America). pp, 136, 178, 233, 234, University of Oklahoma Press. 1999,
http://books.google.com/books?id=E4hxWwCClG0C&pg=PA136&dq
=apache+treaties#v=onepage&q=apache%20treaties&f=true
Magdaleno, Aaron., extracted by., Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe Del Norte El Paso Marriage Records 1728-1775
Deaths 17-28-1775, Extracted by, and copyright 1998, 2009 Aaron Magdaleno, Adapted for the World Wide Web by
James M. Keffer, University of Texas, El Paso (UTEP) microfilm collection, MF 49, roll 14, 1728 to 1775. Rio Grande
Historical Collections (New Mexico State University-NMSU-Las Cruces), Archivo Historico del Arzobispado de
Durango.
1. Archivo de la Cathedral de Cd, Juarez, University of Texas, El Paso MF 489, Roll 1
MF 489, Roll 13, MF 489, Roll 14, MF 488B, Roll 1, MF 489B, Roll 3.
2. Calleros Collection, El Paso Public Library
3. Cd. Juarez Municipal Archives, University of Texas, El Paso, MF513, Roll 6
MF513, Roll 7, MF513, Roll 2, MF513, 1761. MF513, Part II, Roll 13, MF513,
Part II, Roll 10
4. Genealogical Society of Hispanic America, Nuestras Raices Journal, Winter 1994
5. Hispanic Genealogical Research Center of New Mexico, Herencia, October 1995
6. FHL film 1156606
7. FHL film 1156609
8. FHL film 1156614
9. New Mexico Prenuptial Investigation, AHAD 1760-1799. 1996
10. New Mexico Prenuptial Investigation, AHAD 1800- 1893. 2000
http://orangefhc.info/El_Paso1728_1821.html
September 6, 2010
Miguel-Stearns, Teresa; Filiu, Vincenc; and Kim-Prieto, Dennis, "A Closer Look: A Symposium Among Legal
Historians and Law Librarians to Uncover the Spanish Roots of Louisiana Civil Law" (2010). Librarian Scholarship
Series. Paper 23. http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/ylss/23
Nicely, Marilyn K, Annotated Bibliography of Federal and Tribal Law: Technical Services and American Indian Law
Subject Specialist, Print and Internet Sources, University of Oklahoma Law Library April, 2010,
http://thorpe.ou.edu/guide/IndianLawResearchGuide.pdf, March 30, 2016
“Records of Presidio de San Felipe y Santiago de Janos Records, 1706-1858, Benson Latin American Collection,
General Libraries, University of, Texas at Austin, Folder 6A, Section l, Comunicaciones del señor comandante general
don Jacobo Ugarte Loyola, 1790. Comunicaciones del ayudante inspector don Diego de Borica, 1790.
•
•
•
•
•
•
29 de marzo: Al sr. don Antonio Cordero; carta sobre oficio que se pasa al capitán don Manuel de
Casanova, sobre capitancillos indios y la india apacha prisionera mujer de Ysquielnocten que se halla en
San Buenaventura. (Chihuahua) [1l]
22 de agosto Al sr. comandante de la compañía de Janos; carta sobre entregar al indio Guero una india que
hay se halla de las prisioneras. Cumpá. (Chihuahua) [1l]
1 de julio Nava: al sr. com. de Janos; carta sobre volver al capitancillo Tesegoslán sus dos sobrinos en
buena fe. Ayud. Insp. don Roque de Medina, Gandules. (Chihuahua) [1l]
1 de julio Nava: al sr. com. de Janos; carta sobre las diligencias practicadas don los hijos del capitancillo
Pitsago. (Chihuahua) [1l]
31 de Agosto Nava: al sr. don Manuel de Casanova; carta sobre no deber darse entero crédita a lo que ha
dicho el indio que se hizo prisionero en la campaña del Sargento Nicolás Madrid sobre junta que quedara
haciendo el hijo del capitán Chiquito. Pueblo de Bacuachi, Sonora, ten. cor. don Roque de Medina, Babispe.
(Chihuahua) [2l]
8 de septiembre Nava: al sr. don Manuel de Casanova; carta sobre haber llegado un indio hermano de
Tusegoslán. Rachería de Patatirante, ten. don José Ygnacio Escageda, capitancillo Compá, Apaches.
(Chihuahua) [1l]
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Laws
http://www.britannica.com/event/Laws-of-the-Indies
of
The
Indies
Spanish
History,
March
29,
2016,
Vincent, Theodore G., The Legacy of Vincente Guerrero: Mexico’s First Black India, President (Gainesville:
13
Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group
Alternative Report
UN CERD 89th Session: Review of Spain
University Press of Florida, 2001); Lane Clark, “Guerrero Vicente,” Historical Texas
http://historicaltextarchive.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=563,
http://www.blackpast.org/gah/guerrero-vicente-1783-1831#sthash.6HUGzSoS.dpuf, September 16, 2015
Archive.
Map 1: 1705 Terrarum Anglicarum et anterorum Americae Infularum; item curfuum et circuituum flummis Mississipi
dicti. Amfteti proftant apud Petrum SCHENCK. Cum Priviti
Map 2: Mexicana Provincia Societatis IESU DD Joseph Villasenor et Sanchez Delin Ann 1751 Sedium Tchnographia
Secundo Ignatio Humanifsime Annuenti Ann 1754 DCO
14
Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group
Alternative Report
UN CERD 89th Session: Review of Spain
Surviving Three Cycles of Colonialism: A Brief History of the Ndé People, 1700-185016
Matthew Babcock, Ph.D.17
In one of the modern world’s most profound ironies, the Ndé people, who are native inhabitants of North
America and are well-known to most Americans in history, literature, and film as Apaches, are asserting
the right of each of their groups to be recognized as sovereign and live in peace under the protection of
international law. The Ndé are taking this action as a result of repeated human rights violations
experienced during three cycles of colonialism under imperial Spain, Mexico, and the United States. This
essay focuses on the period 1700-1850, emphasizing the violations committed by the Spanish, Mexican,
and U.S. military, as well as Mexican and American settlers and politicians.
Since at the mid-1680s ancestral Jicarillas, Mescaleros, and Lipans of the southern and central plains, who
Spaniards called Palomas, Cuartelejos, Carlanas, Jicarillas, Faraones, Natagés, and Ypandes, were the
“owner[s] and possessor[s] of all of the plains” of “Cíbola.” The majority of these groups maintained
peaceful commercial relations with Spaniards and Pueblo groups in New Mexico, while defending their
central position in the regional political economy against surrounding Jumanos, Caddos, Wichitas, and
Pawnees and encroaching Utes and Comanches between the 1680s and 1720s. During the early 1690s,
prior to the Ndé committing any violent acts against the Spanish and French in the region of modern Texas,
Spanish and French troops conducted joint military campaigns with the Hasinai Caddos (Tejas) against
eastern Ndé groups on the southern plains. Thus, twenty-five years before the founding of San Antonio in
1718, ancestral Lipans and Mescaleros already had a perfectly legitimate reason to be hostile towards
Europeans entering the Apachería.i
Between 1719 and 1766 eastern Ndé groups used a combination of creative adaptive strategies to try to
retain control of the bison and horse trade on the southern and central plains and withstand attacks from
their French-armed indigenous neighbors. These included forming an alliance with the Kadohadachos and
settling near Spanish missions in order to obtain provisions, protection, and spiritual and healing power.
However, frequent disease outbreaks at the missions, Franciscan support of the Spanish military’s unjust
seizure and capture of potential Ndé converts, and the Spanish military’s ongoing imprisonment and
enslavement of Ndé people combined to undermine Ndé-Spanish relations and provoke Ndé retaliation.ii
According to the Jesuit Father Ignaz Pfefferkorn, the treachery of the Spanish military was responsible for
the deterioration of Ndé-Spanish relations in Sonora during the 1730s. At the same time that the Catholic
conversion of a Chokonen named Pedro had revived Jesuit hopes for converting all Ndé people to
Catholicism, a Spanish presidial commander in eastern Sonora had his soldiers seize Pedro’s unsuspecting
delegation of Chokonen emissaries during peace negotiations for extradition to Mexico City. When the
Ndé captives tried to escape, Spanish troops fired on them, mortally wounding Pedro, who requested and
received baptism prior to his death.iii
Three Spanish policy decisions—the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, the Marqués de Rubí’s inspection of
the presidial line from 1766-68, and King Carlos III’s regulations of 1772—together demonstrated the
military’s expanded role in attempting to control the Ndé and other equestrian Native peoples living across
New Spain’s northern frontier. Most infamously, Rubí advocated that Spaniards, Comanches, and Caddoan
Norteños work to achieve “the total extermination” of Lipan Apaches “or at least their complete reduction,”
through the extradition of those who “seek asylum in our missions and presidios” to interior Mexico.
Although the Spanish military never achieved either goal, several officers, including Inspector-in-Chief
Hugo O’Conor, Commander-in-Chief Teodoro de Croix, and Coahuila Governor Juan de Ugalde, did their
best to accomplish those goals in practice.iv
The height of Spanish-led military aggression against the Ndé occurred during the 1770s and 1780s, when
Spanish troops and their indigenous allies launched coordinated strikes on Ndé camps in the heart of their
16
Pre-publication draft for use in the Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group Shadow Report to UN CERD for reviews of
Spain and the Holy See; not for other use without author’s permission.
17
Assistant Professor of History, UNT Dallas; Guest Contributor to the Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group.
15
Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group
Alternative Report
UN CERD 89th Session: Review of Spain
homeland both east and west of the Rio Grande. Spanish officers timed their offensives so that they would
ambush Ndé families when they were most vulnerable, while harvesting mescal near Spanish presidios
from December through February, while planting crops in April, and just before the October harvest.
Spanish troops attacked Southern Apache groups from the Florida and Chiricahua Mountains in the south
to the San Mateo and Mogollon Mountains in the north and Mescaleros, who encompassed groups they
called Natagés, Faraones, and Mescaleros, in the Sacramento, Guadalupe, Organ, and Sierra Blanca
ranges.v
Even more diabolical than the Spanish-led attacks on unsuspecting Ndé families in their homeland was
Commander-in-Chief Teodoro de Croix’s decision to implement the murderous policy recommendation of
his Chihuahua War Council in 1778 calling for him to make peace simultaneously with Mescaleros in
Nueva Vizcaya and Lipans in Coahuila in order for them to attack one another. Following that decision, in
1782 Croix deceived 137 Mescaleros by accepting their request for peace and subsequently having them
extradited and imprisoned in interior New Spain.vi
The attacks after 1786 were part of a reformed Spanish Indian policy under Viceroy Bernardo de Gálvez
and Commander-in-Chief of the Interior Provinces Pedro de Nava, which scholars often refer to as
“enlightened” but was much more aggressive and violent towards Apaches in practice than most specialists
have realized. Presidial commanders conducted a dual strategy of peace and war to pacify Apaches, which
most Ndé people found hypocritical and resented. On the one hand, they offered gifts, rations, protection,
and plots of “fertile land” to those Apache bands who requested peace in the hope of curbing their livestock
raids and turning them into productive sedentary farmers subject to crown authority. At the same time,
however, Spanish troops and their Indian allies, including Apache auxiliaries, were to wage incessant
offensive campaigns into the Apachería (Apache homeland) to compel the remaining independent Apache
bands to “sue for peace” under Spanish terms. Those who refused to submit were either killed in battle or
captured and deported southward to interior Mexico and Havana, Cuba, where they were either imprisoned
or enslaved. Like Rubí, Galvez recognized that “the extermination of the Apaches” was a possible
outcome of his policy, which he thought could be achieved in two different ways. First, as Croix had
already attempted with the Lipans and Mescaleros, Spaniards could encourage Apaches to use Spanish
arms to fight each other to the point of “their mutual destruction,” and, second, Spanish troops could work
together with Comanches, their Caddoan allies, and other indigenous groups already warring with Apaches
to achieve it.vii
In addition to captivity, slavery, and death, the Ndé people experienced deep political challenges as groups
adapted to this multifaceted policy in distinct ways. Those Ndé who negotiated peace with Spanish officers
and resettled near presidios, known as Apaches de paz, or “peaceful Apaches,” largely shaped the system.
Subverting Spanish efforts to make them wholly sedentary, Apaches de paz adapted to reservation life by
remaining semi-sedentary and using Spanish rations, gifts, and military protection to sustain and preserve
their families. A minority of reservation-dwelling Ndé men, most notably the Chokonen chief El Compá
and his sons Juan Diego and Juan José at Janos, worked together with presidial troops and redeemed
captive men of Christian parents to reduce violence in the region by serving as scouts, auxiliaries, and
political leaders. The majority of Ndé, however, relied on what they always had—movement, economic
exchange, and small-scale livestock raiding—to ensure their political and cultural independence. Most
independent Ndé had only limited contact with Spaniards, and most Apaches de paz continued to subsist on
their own procured fruits, nuts, and game, while receiving weekly rations of Spanish corn, meat, and
tobacco simply as dietary supplements. In general, supposedly “peaceful” Apaches exhibited mixed
loyalties, sometimes serving Spanish interests and other times subverting them.viii
The Spanish and Mexican military’s system of reservation-like Apache establecimientos (establishments or
settlements) experienced an uneven decline. Lipans and Mescaleros in the east deserted their reservations
in the 1790s, which was decades before Southern Apache groups in Nueva Vizcaya did. However, Western
Apaches at Tucson never left. After initially withstanding the deterioration of peace and order during the
Mexican War of Independence between 1810 and 1821, a variety of factors, including ongoing political and
economic instability in Mexico City, competition from United States traders, and a regional small pox
epidemic, caused most Apaches de paz to desert their reservations by 1832. Ndé raiding increased in
frequency and intensity during the 1820s in large part because of the Mexican government’s decision to cut
16
Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group
Alternative Report
UN CERD 89th Session: Review of Spain
costs by eliminating meat rations for reservation-dwelling Apaches in 1822 and rations in absentia in
1824.ix
After the collapse of the establecimientos in Chihuahua and Sonora in 1832, Mexican presidios and towns,
which were previously zones for reciprocal diplomacy and exchange, disintegrated into arenas of
treacherous violence. Desperate to curtail Ndé raiding and killing, officials in underfunded and
undermanned northern Mexican states implemented an Apache scalp bounty, and money-hungry soldiers,
citizens, and contract killers gunned down unsuspecting and unarmed Ndé men, women, and children,
which simply escalated the reciprocal violence. A minority of Mexican military officers and Ndé leaders,
however, still valued peace and trusted one another enough to try to renegotiate, and small groups of
Apaches placed their lives at risk by temporarily resettling at presidios in Chihuahua and Sonora.
Following Chihuahua’s implementation of an Apache scalp bounty in 1837, James Kirker and his mixed
band of Delaware, Shawnee, Mexican, and American mercenaries, with plenty of help from Mexican
vecinos, took the scalps of an estimated 487 Apaches. But that does not tell the whole story. Attempting to
clarify the law, Chihuahuan presidial commanders implored Kirker and his contract killers not to attack
peace-seeking Apache rancherías and reservation-dwelling Apaches de paz. But they repeatedly ignored
the warnings, and routinely captured, scalped, imprisoned, and killed peace-abiding Apaches. This began
with their imprisoning and killing of 53 peaceful Apaches near Janos in January and March 1840, including
the abduction and deportation of Chihene Mimbres leader Pisago Cabezón’s son Marcelo to Chihuahua,
and culminated in the slaughter of 148 Apaches de paz at Galeana and the San Buenaventura Valley in July
1846.x Little wonder, then, that Apaches were distrustful and fearful of coming into presidios and towns to
negotiate and trade in this era.
Eager to exploit the mineral and land wealth of the Apachería, the large number of Anglo Americans
settling across the American Southwest after 1848 posed the newest and greatest threat to Ndé survival.
Protecting the settlers were members of the U.S. Army, who established nine forts across present New
Mexico alone between 1846 and 1855, including Fort Webster, which stood in the heart of the Apachería
near the Santa Rita copper mines. At the same time, without consulting Ndé people, U.S. and Mexican
politicians made three critical decisions that undermined the Indians’ legal claim to the Apachería. In 1845
the U.S. Congress voted to annex Texas, and Mexico ceded most of present-day New Mexico and Arizona
to the United States in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848 and the Gadsden Purchase of 1853. In
spite of what these agreements stated on paper, the Ndé people still occupied and controlled the vast
majority of their homeland from 1845-1850, and they would intensify their efforts to retain it and their
sovereignty in the coming decades.xi
Notes
The vast majority of the information in this essay comes from the author’s forthcoming book, Apaches de
Paz: Adaptation to Hispanic Rule in the American Southwest, 1700-1850 (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2016).
i
For the quotation, see Alonso de Posada, Alonso de Posada Report, 1686: A Description of the Area of the Present
Southern United States in the Seventeenth Century, ed. ed. and trans. Alfred B. Thomas, The Spanish Borderlands
Series (Pensacola: Perdido Bay Press, 1982), para. 37, 41. On easterm Ndé territorial expansion from 1686-1715, see
also Juan Antonio de Trasviña Retis, The Founding of Missions at La Junta de los Rios, ed. Reginald C. Reindorp,
Supplementary Studies of the Texas Catholic Historical Society (Austin: Texas Catholic Historical Society, 1938), 1819; Jack D. Forbes, "The Appearance of the Mounted Indian in Northern Mexico and the Southwest, to 1680,"
Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 15 no. 2 (Summer 1959): 205; Jack D. Forbes, Apache, Navaho, and Spaniard,
2nd ed. (1960; reprint, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), 196; Gary Clayton Anderson, The Indian
Southwest, 1580-1830: Ethnogenesis and Reinvention (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 95-97, 110-111;
David La Vere, The Texas Indians (College Station, TX: Texas A&M Press, 2004), 98-102; Enrique Gilbert-Michael
Maestas, “Culture and History of Native American Peoples of South Texas” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin,
2003), 149; Sherry Robinson, I Fought a Good Fight: The History of the Lipan Apaches (Denton: University of North
Texas Press, 2013), 28. For Comanche and Ute intrusions, see Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire, Lamar
17
Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group
Alternative Report
UN CERD 89th Session: Review of Spain
Series in Western History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 28; William E. Dunn, "Apache Relations in
Texas, 1718-1750," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 14 (January 1911): 203-204, 239.
ii
Herbert Eugene Bolton, Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1915), 3436, 68-69, 79; Albert H. Schroeder, "Shifting for Survival in the Spanish Southwest," New Mexico Historical Review
43 (October 1968): 301-302; Elizabeth A. H. John, Storms Brewed in Other Men's Worlds: The Confrontation of
Indians, Spanish, and French in the Southwest, 1540—1795 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1975),
255, 265-266, 312, 317-318, 338-341, 362-363, 381; Anderson, The Indian Southwest, 123-126; Hämäläinen, The
Comanche Empire, 24-37, 39-40, 48, 57-67.
iii
Ignaz Pfefferkorn, Sonora: A Description of the Province, ed. George P. Hammond, ed., Coronado Cuarto
Centenneial Publications, 1540-1940 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1949), 35-36.
iv
Sidney B. Brinckerhoff and Odie B. Faulk, eds. and trans., Lancers for the King: A Study of the Frontier Military
System of Northern New Spain, with a Translation of the Royal Regulations of 1772 (Phoenix: Arizona Historical
Foundation, 1965), 7; Max L. Moorhead, The Apache Frontier: Jacobo Ugarte and Spanish-Indian Relations in
Northern New Spain, 1769-1791, Civilization of the American Indian Series (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1968),
116-117.; Marqués de Rubí, Dictamen, Tacubaya, 10 April 1768, translated in Jack Jackson and William C. Foster,
eds., Imaginary Kingdom: Texas as Seen by the Rivera and Rubí Military Expeditions, 1727-1767 (Austin: Texas State
Historical Association, 1995), Aricle 16, 181-182. For a published Spanish version of Rubí’s Dictamen, see María del
Carmen Velásquez, ed. La frontera norte y la experiencia colonial (Mexico: Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores,
1982), 29-84. Rubí advocated the extermination of Lipans specifically, not all Apaches, as a majority of Borderlands
specialists have mistakenly suggested. See David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1992), 220; John, Storms Brewed, 440; Max L. Moorhead, The Presidio: Bastion of the Spanish
Borderlands (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975), 60-61; Moorhead, Apache Frontier, 16-17; Joseph F.
Park, "Spanish Indian Policy in Northern Mexico, 1765-1810," Arizona and the West 4 (Winter 1962): 330; Bolton,
Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century, 381-382. For a notable exception, which is still not evident in the actual text,
see David J. Weber, Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2005), 325n64.
v
For Spanish attacks on Ndé groups during the 1770s and 1780s, see Hugo O'Conor, The Defenses of Northern New
Spain: Hugo O'Conor's Report to Teodoro de Croix, July 22, 1777, ed. and trans. Donald C. Cutter (Dallas: Southern
Methodist University Press/DeGolyer Library, 1994), 87-88, paras. 215, 220; Alfred Barnaby Thomas, ed. and trans.,
Forgotten Frontiers: A Study of the Spanish Indian Policy of Don Juan Bautista de Anza, Governor of New Mexico,
1777-1787 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1932), 1, 4-12, 156, 192, 209, 218, 221, 320; Adlai Feather, ed.,
"Colonel Don Fernando de la Concha Diary, 1788," New Mexico Historical Review 34 (October 1959): 297, 300;
Morris E. Opler, "Chiricahua Apache," in Handbook of North American Indians: Southwest, ed. Alfonso Ortiz
(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1983), 403; Opler, "Mescalero Apache," 420. For Ndé seasonal
movements and subsistence, see Harry W. Basehart, "Mescalero Apache Band Organization and Leadership," in
Apachean Culture History and Ethnology, ed. Keith H. Basso and Morris E. Opler (Tucson: University of Arizona
Press, 1971), 39; Grenville Goodwin, The Social Organization of the Western Apache (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1942), 158; Robert N. Bellah, Apache Kinship Systems (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952), 85;
Keith H. Basso, "Western Apache," in Handbook of North American Indians, ed. Alfonso Ortiz (Washington, D.C.:
Smithsonian Institution, 1983), 469.
vi
Croix, et. al., “Council of War,” Chihuahua, June 9-15, 1778 in Alfred Barnaby Thomas, ed. and trans., The Plains
Indians and New Mexico, 1751-1778: A Collection of Documents Illustrative of the History of the Eastern Frontier of
New Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1940), 200. See also Alfred Barnaby Thomas, ed. and
trans., Teodoro de Croix and the Northern Frontier of New Spain, 1776-1783: from the Original Document in the
Archives of the Indies, Seville (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1941), 37-38, 62; Moorhead, Apache Frontier,
47-48, 120.
vii
For the quotation, see Bernardo de Gálvez, Instructions for Governing the Interior Provinces of New Spain, 1786, ed.
trans. and ed. Donald E. Worcester (Berkeley: Quivira Society, 1951), para. 42.
viii
Matthew Babcock, "Blurred Borders: North America's Forgotten Apache Reservations," in Contested Spaces of
Early America, ed. Juliana Barr and Edward Countryman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 176.
ix
For the uneven breakdown of the system after 1810, see Weber, Bárbaros, 360n60; Ignacio Zúñiga, Rápida ojeada al
estado de Sonora: dirigida y dedicada al supremo gobierno de la nación (Mexico: Juan Ojeda, 1835), 22-26. For the
ending of meat rations and the 1824 policy change, see Janos ration lists 1822-1827, JPR-UTA; William B. Griffen,
Apaches at War and Peace: The Janos Presidio, 1750-1858 (1988; reprint, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1998), 125, 131; William B. Griffen, Utmost Good Faith: Patterns of Apache-Mexican Hostilities in Northern
Chihuahua Border Warfare, 1821-1848 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988), 21.
x
Ralph A. Smith, "Indians in American-Mexican Relations Before the War of 1846," Hispanic American Historical
Review 43 (February 1963): 45-46, 62-63; Ralph Adam Smith, Borderlander: The Life of James Kirker, 1793-1852
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 170; Griffen, Apaches at War and Peace, 187, 216; Edwin R.
Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas: Chief of the Chiricahua Apaches (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), 83-86,
134-136. The scalp estimate comes from Smith, 170. According to Lorraine García, Pisago Cabezón the younger was
18
Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group
Alternative Report
UN CERD 89th Session: Review of Spain
a Chihene leader from the middle Gila River Valley region, who succeeded his father as leader, following Pisago
Cabezón the elder’s passing in the late 1830s (email, 7/14/14). See also Griffen, Apaches at War and Peace, 127, 149;
Smith, Borderlander, 48.
xi
Joseph F. Park, "The Apaches in Mexican-American Relations, 1848-1861: A Footnote to the Gadsden Treaty,"
Arizona and the West 3 (Summer 1961): 145; James L. Haley, Apaches: A History and Culture Portrait (Garden City:
Doubleday, 1981), 184-187; Opler, "Mescalero Apache," 420-421; Opler, "Chiricahua Apache," 404.
(Haley, Apaches, 184-187; Park, Apaches in Mexican-American Relation, 145; Opler, Chiricahua Apache, 404; Opler,
Mescalero Apache, 420-421).
19