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The Revolt of Enriquillo and the Historiography of Early Spanish America*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Ida Altman
Ida Altman*
Affiliation:
University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida
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Extract

In 1519 Enrique, one of the few remaining caciques, or indigenous chiefs, of the island of Hispaniola, removed himself and some of his people from the reach of Spanish authority. For nearly a decade and a half he and his followers lived in the remote and barely accessible south-central mountains of his native island, occasionally raiding Spanish settlements for arms and tools and clashing with militia units but for the most part avoiding contact with Spanish society. Enrique eluded the numerous patrols that were sent to eradicate what became a stubbornly persistent locus of defiance of Spanish authority that attracted other discontented residents of the island, including both African and indigenous slaves and servants as well as small numbers of nominally ‘free’ Indians.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 63 , Issue 4 , April 2007 , pp. 587 - 614
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2007

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Footnotes

*

Research for this article was conducted with the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of New Orleans. I am grateful to James Lockhart, David Geggus, and the two anonymous reviewers for The Americas for their very helpful comments and suggestions. Although I probably have not addressed all the points they raised, their queries and insights enriched the discussion considerably.

References

1 On the question of how Enrique has been portrayed, see Esteban Deive, Carlos, La Española y la esclavitud del Indio (Santo Domingo: Fundación García Arévalo, 1995), p. 298, n. 55.Google Scholar

2 The literature on rebellion and revolt in colonial Spanish America is extensive. See, for example, Susan Schroeder’s Introduction and Murdo Macleod’s concluding chapter, “Some Thoughts on the Pax Colonial, Colonial Violence, and Perceptions of Both,” in Schroeder, Susan, ed., Native Resistance and the Pax Colonial in New Spain (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998).Google Scholar

3 On this point especially see Guitar, Lynn A., “Willing It So: Intimate Glimpses of Encomienda Life in Early-Sixteenth-Century Hispaniola,” Colonial Latin American Historical Review 7:3 (Summer 1998), pp. 245–263.Google Scholar

4 Scholars of another, until recently relatively neglected, region, the present-day southeastern United States, have recognized the crucial connection between that area and the Caribbean; see, for example, Landers, Jane, Black Society in Spanish Florida (University of Illinois Press, 1999);Google Scholar Hoffman, Paul E., The Spanish Crown and the Defense of the Caribbean, 1535–1585 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980);Google Scholar and the same author’s A New Andalucía and a Way to the Orient (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990). Amy Turner Bushnell discusses the significance of maritime peripheries in Situado and Sabana: Spain’s Support System for the Presidio and Mission Province of Florida (American Museum of Natural History, 1994). See also Daniel H. Usner’s discussion of the historiography of the colonial southeast in Brown, Richmond F., ed., Coastal Encounters: The Transformation of the Gulf South in the Eighteenth Century (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, forthcoming).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For recent work that ties the early sugar industry in the islands to its broader development in the Atlantic world, see Schwartz, Stuart B., ed., Tropical Babylons: Sugar and the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450–1680 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), especially the contributions by Genaro Rodríguez Morel and Alejandro de la Fuente on Hispaniola and Cuba respectively.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 See Guitar, Lynn, “Cultural Genesis: Relationships among Indians, Africans and Spaniards in Rural Hispaniola, First Half of the Sixteenth Century” (Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1998), p. 208.Google Scholar Floyd, Troy, The Columbus Dynasty in the Caribbean, 1492–1526 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1973), p. 63,Google Scholar writes of the execution of Anacaona that “the whole event is … fraught with ambiguity and obscurity” because of the lack of documentation. “What seems certain is that the Indians and their allies were badly defeated and Anacaona was hanged. Certain caciques fled to Cuba.... The native feuds were broken, and Ovando gave out lands and Indians to the soldiers who accompanied him.”

6 There seems to be virtually nothing else known about Enrique's early life. Although many writers have emphasized his knowledge of Spanish and literacy gained from his Franciscan education, it is impossible to judge the extent of either. He left a will, but it has not survived. Although Guitar refers to the famous letter from Enrique to Carlos V agreeing to the terms of the accord reached with Spanish authorities as “the only extant writing of a Taino” (“Willing It So,” p. 257 note 33), most likely he dictated the letter and possibly it was phrased by someone else. The signature, only part of which has been preserved, does not match the hand in which the letter is written. Deive, , La Española y la esclavitud, p. 295, note 46, uncovered one additional snippet of information regarding Enrique. In the royal cédula of June 1532 that authorized Francisco de Barrionuevo to enlist recruits to suppress the rebellion (in Archivo General de Indias [hereafter AGI] Contratación 5090), Enrique is mentioned with the surname of “Bejo.” Deive refers to this as “el supuesto apellido español de Enrique,” but perhaps it is a corrupted form of “Behechio,” the name of Enrique’s great uncle who once ruled Jaraguá.Google Scholar

7 See Deagan, Kathleen and Cruxent, José María, Columbus’s Outpost among the Taínos. Spain and America at La Isabela, 1493–1498 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), pp. 60–62 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Wilson, Samuel M., Hispaniola. Caribbean Chiefdoms in the Age of Columbus (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press), especially Chapter 3.Google Scholar

8 See Deagan, and Cruxent, , Columbus’s Outpost, p. 30,Google Scholar and Sauer, Carl O., The Early Spanish Main (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), Chapters 2 and 3.Google Scholar

9 Basic works in English on island societies in the earliest years of Spanish settlement include Sauer, Early Spanish Main; Floyd, The Columbus Dynasty; Wilson, Hispaniola; and Deagan and Cruxent, Columbus’s Outpost. Guitar, “Cultural Genesis,” is promising in conception but falls somewhat short in execution; her article “Willing It So” reflects a more careful use of the relatively sparse documentary sources. Not surprisingly, the literature in Spanish is far more extensive; for a useful introduction see Pons, Frank Moya, Después de Colón (Madrid: Alianza America, 1987)Google Scholar and, more recently, Caballos, Esteban Mira, El Indio Antillano: Repartimiento, encomienda y esclavitud (1492–1542) (Seville: Muñoz Moya, 1997),Google Scholar and Antillas mayores, 1492–1550. Ensayos y documentos (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2000).

10 See Floyd, , Columbus Dynasty, p. 29 Google Scholar on the imposition of the tribute system in 1495, and Wilson, , Hispaniola, pp. 91–94.Google Scholar

11 On slave taking and export, see Floyd, , Columbus Dynasty, p. 28 Google Scholar and Deagan, and Cruxent, , Columbus’s Outpost, pp. 60–61.Google Scholar

12 Floyd, , Columbus Dynasty, pp. 26–27, 60, 63.Google Scholar A lengthy letter of 1516 written by members of the Dominican order in Hispaniola mentioned that although Jaraguá lacked gold, “the Indians viewed it as the most important part of the island where there were many great caciques, a great deal of food, and many beautiful women.” See Marte, Roberto, ed., Santo Domingo en los manuscritos de Juan Bautista Muñoz (Santo Domingo: Ediciones Fundación García Arévalo, 1981), p. 167.Google Scholar

13 The size of the population of the islands at contact is much disputed; estimates for Hispaniola have ranged from a low of 100,000 to highs of several million. For a recent, careful reconsideration of the question, see Livi-Bacci, Massimo, “Return to Hispaniola: Reassessing a Demographic Catastrophe,” Hispanic American Historical Review 83:1 (2003), pp 3–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 See Wilson, , Hispaniola, pp. 94–96, on this point.Google Scholar

15 Deagan, and Cruxent, , Columbus’s Outpost, p. 209 note that the royal treasurer counted 60,000 people in 1508.Google Scholar The figure for 1510 was 33,523, and in the 1514 repartimiento officials reported 26,334 Indians. These figures, of course, may well exclude people who had taken refuge in the mountains.

16 For a list of early governors and audiencia members, see Guitar, , “Cultural Genesis,” p. 98.Google Scholar

17 See Márquez, Luis Arranz, Repartimiento y encomienda en la isla Española: El repartimiento de Alburquerque de 1514 (Santo Domingo: Fundación García Arévalo, 1991),Google Scholar and Demorizi, Emilio Rodriguez, Dominicos y las encomiendas de indios de la isla Española (Santo Domingo: Editora del Caribe, 1971).Google Scholar

18 According to Batlle, Manuel Peña, La rebelión del Bahoruco (Santo Domingo: Librería Hispaniola, 1970 [lst ed., 1948]), p. 74,Google Scholar Francisco Hernández, who was assigned 36 of Enrique’s people, worked for Francisco de Valenzuela, managing his estates. It makes sense that Hernández was an employee or at best junior partner of Valenzuela, as he is never mentioned as encomendero after Valenzuela’s death.

19 Las Casas, Fray Bartolomé de, Historia de las Indias (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1965, 2nd edition), vol. 3, p. 260 (my translation).Google Scholar According to Batlle, Peña, Rebelión del Bahoruco, p. 73,Google Scholar doña Mencia was Enrique’s cousin, and she and Enrique married in the church (in this he follows the histories written by Las Casas, Oviedo, and Herrera).

20 This may not have been the only time Vadillo defied the audiencia, which in the 1520s accused him of illegally recruiting people for an expedition to Santa Marta (see AGI Santo Domingo 77 ramo 3 no. 52). Audiencia officials were deeply concerned about the growing numbers of departures from the island for the mainland.

21 See Guitar’s discussion of Vadillo’s will in her article “Willing It So,” pp. 252–254, in which she notes that Vadillo “left more than thirty individual bequests, many of which were to individuals who were designated as ‘indio’ or ‘mestizo.’”

22 Casas, Las, Historia, vol. 3, p. 261.Google Scholar

23 Cipriano de Utrera’s, Fray scholarly study, Polémica de Enriquillo (Santo Domingo: Editora del Caribe, 1973),Google Scholar attempts to refute many of the particulars of Las Casas’s account. This focus substantially skews the emphasis in what is nonetheless the most extensive scholarly treatment of the revolt. His work, completed in the late 1940s or early 1950s and published posthumously from an unedited manuscript, is valuable in that it reproduces (mainly in the footnotes) long excerpts from the extant records. Utrera’s work is so convoluted that it is frequently difficult to decipher; see the comments in the preface written by E. Rodríguez Demorizi. Notwithstanding the undeniable importance of the volume, it nonetheless seems worthwhile to reexamine the revolt and consult the existing records. The bulk of the documentation consists of letters and records of the audiencia of Santo Domingo, which provide insight into Spanish officials’ evolving perceptions of a rapidly changing society, as well as aspects of interethnic and social relations that help to define the larger context of relations among Spaniards, Indians and Africans in the early Spanish Caribbean. Another important source for the study of early Hispaniola and Enriquillo is Marte, Santo Domingo, which is an extensive compilation of transcriptions made by Juan Bautista Muñoz in the late eighteenth century. In some cases Bautista Muñoz appears to have paraphrased rather than transcribed parts of the documents, so again it is worthwhile going back to the original records insofar as possible.

24 Batlle, Peña, Rebelión del Bahoruco, 54,Google Scholar notes that in September 1515 Las Casas left Santo Domingo for Spain, where he remained for several years.

25 For a transcript of the Interrogatorio Jeronimiano of 1517 (original in Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Indiferente General, legajo 1624) and testimony of the witnesses, see Demorizi, Rodríguez, Los dominicos, pp. 273–354.Google Scholar

26 See Batlle, Peña, Rebelión del Bahoruco, p. 62.Google Scholar

27 One of the witnesses in the 1517 Jeronymite inquiry, Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón, testified that “estando los dichos indios en pueblos juntos muchos caciques entrellos averia muchas discordias y desavenencias aun también tendrían aparejo de se levantar conra los españoles.” See Demorizi, Rodríguez, Los dominicos, p. 308.Google Scholar

28 See letter from the Consejo de Indias to the king of July 1532, in which they wrote that their sources in Hispaniola had written that since Enrique rebelled “some Indians called ‘cimarrones’ have joined with them, and some whom the bishop, president of Santo Domingo, put at liberty.” Marte, , Santo Domingo, p. 360.Google Scholar A letter of February 20, 1532 from Dr. Infante and Lie. Zuazo reported that “we are informed that among them go Indians of those who have been vacated [from their encomiendas] and put at liberty” (AGI Santo Domingo 49, ramo 3 n. 14). See also Batlle, Peña, Rebelión del Bahoruco, p. 86,Google Scholar who mentions an argument of Fray Cipriano de Utrera’s “sobre la necesidad en que se vio Rodrigo de Figueroa de sustituir los mayordomos de aquellos pueblos libres por personas casadas que fueran a ellos con sus mujeres, para evitar las deshonestidades que los anteriores hacían alla con las indias” (his emphasis).

29 See Utrera, , Polémica de Enriquillo, p. 442.Google Scholar

30 See Utrera, , Polémica de Enriquillo, p. 165.Google Scholar

31 In his testimony for the inquiry conducted by the Jeronymites in 1517, royal factor Juan de Ampies complained that the Indians often fled from the Spaniards to the forests, living off such repellent (to him) items as spiders, crayfish, snakes, roots “and other filthy and poisonous things from the land” (“aranas y xueyes y cangrejos culebras rrayzes e otras vascosydades de la tierra ponçoñosas que no los manteniemientos que los españoles les dan”). See Demorizi, Rodríguez, Los dominicos, p. 302.Google Scholar

32 Marte, , Santo Domingo, p. 331.Google Scholar

33 Alpargates were a kind of sandal made of rope or hemp; AGI Patronato 174 ramo 52.

34 See Utrera, , Polémica de Enriquillo, pp. 468–470, note 40 for the costs of the conflict, which he estimates to have been between 24,000 and 29,000 pesos de oro.Google Scholar

35 In March 1533 the oidores reported that “the merchants that supplied the patrols … don’t want to provide from their stores more clothing … and it has been necessary for us to provide guarantees to other merchants to provide it because the war will not cease” (AGI Santo Domingo 49 ramo 4, n. 25).

36 Marte, , Santo Domingo, p. 295.Google Scholar According to Batlle, Peña, Rebelión del Bahoruco, p. 108,Google Scholar Diego Colón had sent Pedro de Vadillo with seventy or eighty men to pursue Enrique prior to 1523.

37 Marte, , Santo Domingo, p. 346, letter of late July 1529. See also AGI Patronato 174 ramo 52.Google Scholar

38 For information on men serving in patrols, see Utrera, , Polémica de Enriquillo, pp. 470–471.Google Scholar

39 Casas, Las, Historia, vol. 3, pp. 267–268,Google Scholar notes that regardless of whether individuals like Ciguayo (another rebel) or Tamayo had any direct connection with Enrique, Enrique’s reputation was such that the Spanish residents assumed that their violent raids were at least indirectly his work, further exacerbating their fear of him. Las Casas writes that a nephew of Tamayo who was with Enrique persuaded his uncle to join forces with Enrique as one of his captains.

40 Marte, , Santo Domingo, p. 296.Google Scholar According to Batlle, Peña, Rebelión del Bahoruco, p. 108, Hernando de San Miguel established himself in Yaquimo and was so successful in harassing Enrique and his people that Enrique realized he would have to relocate.Google Scholar

41 According to Deive, , La Española y la esclavitud, p. 292,Google Scholar Sebastián Ramírez de Fuenleal, who had been “juez de Granada durante la rebellion de las Alpujarras, recibe la comisión de poner fin a la Guerra del Baoruco.” In a letter of 1529 Ramírez de Fuenleal observed that the mountains in which Enrique was entrenched were more rugged than those of Granada.

42 AGI Patronato 174 ramo 52. While the president might have been somewhat disingenuous in arguing the military superiority of Enrique and his followers over other combatants Spaniards had encountered to date in America, he recognized and articulated an important advantage that the inhabitants of Hispaniola had gained compared to groups that the Spaniards engaged elsewhere. On this point see John F. Guilmartin, Jr.’s perceptive comments in “The Cutting Edge: An Analysis of the Spanish Invasion and Overthrow of the Inca Empire, 1532–1539 in Andrien, Kenneth J. and Adorno, Rolena, eds., Transatlantic Encounters. Europeans and Andeans in the Sixteenth Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991).Google Scholar Guilmartin (p. 61) points out that in confronting Pizarro and his men, the Incas “simply did not possess the means to profit from their understanding of the Spaniards’ weaknesses and limitations” and that “some twenty years, or two generations, were needed for the indigenous populations of the Americas to absorb effectively the military technologies that might have enabled them to survive on their own cultural terms..” In his education and his life-long exposure to Spanish society, Enrique was very much a product of the second generation.

43 Casas, Las, Historia, vol. 3, p. 264.Google Scholar

44 See Deive, , La Española y la esclavitud, p. 291.Google Scholar Deive provides a good if brief synopsis of Enrique’s revolt (pp. 289–299). See also his La esclavitud del negro en Santo Domingo (1492–1844) (Santo Domingo: Museo del Hombre Dominicano, 1980) vol. 2, pp. 442–445.

Utrera, , Polémica de Enriquillo, p. 450, note 19, argues that the damage wrought by San Miguel and his men forced Enrique and his people further east in the Bahoruco.Google Scholar

45 Casas, Las, Historia, vol. 3, p. 268.Google Scholar

46 See the letter of July 31, 1529 from Licenciados Zuazo and Espinosa and president and bishop-elect Sebastián Ramírez de Fuenleal in which they mention the president’s having written a letter in the name of the king “pardoning him everything that had passed and further that they liberated him and the other Indians with him so that they could live on their own in complete freedom wherever they wished where I would provide some sheep and pigs.” AGI Patronato 174 ramo 52.

47 See Casas, Las, Historia, vol. 3, p. 269.Google Scholar

48 According to Deive, , La Española y la esclavitud, p. 291,Google Scholar fray Remigio de Mejía was sent by the audiencia to participate in the negotiations between Enrique and San Miguel. If so, it would have been on fray Remigio's second attempt to contact Enrique that he was so badly treated. Batlle, Peña, Rebelión del Bahoruco, p. 108,Google Scholar claims that fray Remigio had been sent by the audiencia to join Hernando de San Miguel in late 1526 or early 1527. The audiencia, however, reported that fray Remigio was treated roughly both times he tried to meet with Enrique.

49 See Marte, , Santo Domingo, p. 296,Google Scholar and Casas, Las, Historia, vol. 3, pp. 265–266.Google Scholar

50 Batlle, Peña, Rebelión del Bahoruco, p. 111,Google Scholar writes that when Enrique attacked Yaquimo “asaltaron la bella estancia que alii tenía nada menos que San Miguel, mataron muchos indios españolizantes, se llevaron indias y caballos y todo cuanto pudieron sacar de la estancia, quemaron los bohíos y hasta ahorcaron un muchacho de tres años.”

51 AGI Santo Domingo 49, ramo 4, no. 27; “enviamos muy contentas estas indias.”

52 The lengthy letter to the king from oidores Vadillo and Infante describing these events is in AGI Santo Domingo 49 ramo 4 no. 28.

53 The oidores commented “casi deste mismo tenor fue la paz que con el concerto en dias pasados en Capitan Hernando de San Miguel que por no venirse haber y estar con el no hubo efecto.” AGI Santo Domingo 49 ramo 4 no. 28.

54 AGI Santo Domingo 49 ramo 4 no. 30

55 See AGI Santo Domingo 49, ramo 4, no. 30.

56 “y porque en estos principios no le alteren con ir algun español desmandado a su pueblo que lo mismo fue causa de su alzamiento al principio se ha defendido que so pena de muerte sin licencia ninguno vaya a donde el esta ni.su gente mas que los dejen estar libremente,” AGI Santo Domingo 49 ramo 4 no. 28.

57 AGI Santo Domingo 49 ramo 4 no. 28

58 AGI Santo Domingo 49 ramo 5 no. 35.

59 AGI Santo Domingo 49 ramo 5 no. 35.

60 AGI Santo Domingo 77 ramo 4 no. 90, letter from Diego Caballero, escribano del audiencia 28 September 1535. See also AGI Santo Domingo 49 ramo 5 no. 41. Unfortunately, Enrique’s will has not survived in any form.

61 Barrionuevo’s report to the crown of August 26, 1533 (AGI Santo Domingo 77 ramo 4 no. 69), reads in part: “hay muchos mestizos en esta isla hijos de españoles y de indias … Los varones son mal inclinados y aun los hijos de los españoles que nacen acá lo son, cuanto mas los mestizos porque son naturalmente bulliciosos y mentirosos y amigos de qualquiera maldad y enemigos de bondad y podria ser questos criándose como se crian en la tierra y entre esta gente que es de poco verdad y constancia … Siendo hombres podrían alzarse con esta isla ansi con indios como con negros porque en este camino del Baoruco he hallado dos mestizos, uno con Enrique y otro con veinte indios en la punta del Tiburón alzados y estos tales si se llevasen a esos reynos podrían ser buenos cristianos.”

62 See their letter of July 31, 1529, in which they wrote that “he has so many spies of the Spaniards in this city [Santo Domingo] and in the countryside that they can’t make a move without them knowing about it.” AGI Patronato 174 ramo 52.

63 See Demorizi, Rodríguez, Los dominicos, 332–333 Google Scholar for Pedro Romero's testimony in the inquiry conducted by the Jeronymites in 1517. He testified that he was a “vecino de la villa de Salvatierra de la çabana de Santiago.” He said he had been on the island about eighteen years, during fourteen of which he had been married to an Indian woman. See also Utrera, , Polémica de Enriquillo, p. 470, note 46.Google Scholar

64 AGI Santo Domingo 49 ramo 6 no. 41.

65 See, for example, Marte, , Santo Domingo, pp. 397, 404, 412–414.Google Scholar

66 Marte, , Santo Domingo, p. 401.Google Scholar

67 See discussion of the revolt in Deive, , La esclavitud del negro, vol. 2, pp. 439–441,Google Scholar mainly based on Oviedo’s account. The slaves also threatened the estate of oidor Licenciado Zuazo, said to have more than 120 slaves.

68 Landers, Jane, “The Central African Presence in Spanish Maroon Communities” in Heywood, Linda M., ed., Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). p. 234.Google Scholar The population figures she cites come from a report by archdeacon Alonso de Castro to the Council of the Indies.

69 Marte, , Santo Domingo, p. 404.Google Scholar

70 Deive, , La esclavitud del negro, p. 441,Google Scholar writes that “uno de los lugares favoritos para refugiarse, y que con el tiempo sería la cimarronera más común de todas las que existieron en la isla, era el sistema montañoso de Baoruco, donde desde 1519 el cacique Enriquillo se hallaba alzado con sus partidarios.”

71 See Utera, , Polémica de Enriquillo, pp. 481–484,Google Scholar note 57, in which he discusses the African slave known as Sebastián Lemba and quotes a letter of July 1546 from oidor Grajeda, who wrote that Lemba and other captains “have been in revolt in the sierra of Bahoruco, where don Enrique, indio, once was” (from AGI Santo Domingo 49). In January of 1547 oidor Cerrato wrote to the king that “in the whole island no one knows of any black in revolt except for some who are in the Bahoruco, who don’t leave there and no one knows anything of them.” The Spanish patrol sent in pursuit of Lemba “found the blacks in the old Bahoruco … and there they found some Indians, whom they attacked first, and they warned the blacks, who fled, and they only killed one, their leader, and another, and apprehended certain Indian women whom the blacks had, and the rest ran away” (quoted in letter from Cerrato of 19 March 1547, AGI Santo Domingo 49). For more on Lemba, who led some 140 warriors, see Landers, , “The Central African Presence,” pp. 234–235.Google Scholar She concludes that he may have been of Central African origin.

72 Deive, , La esclavitud del negro, p. 442,Google Scholar notes that “el Baoruco atrajo por igual a indios y negros, de modo que en los años que duró la rebelión de Enriquillo unos y otros convivieron juntos y opusieron resistencia a los intentos de los españoles por reducirlos.”

73 Marte, , Santo Domingo, pp. 413–414.Google Scholar

74 Certainly both before and after Enrique, Spaniards in the Indies forged alliances with indigenous groups. Doubtless the most famous early example was Cortés’s alliance with the Tlaxcalans against Moteuczoma and the Triple Alliance. Although the Tlaxcalans gained certain long-term benefits by allying with the Spaniards, they agreed to assist them after initial resistance appeared to be futile and they capitulated. Enrique and his people, in contrast, were never defeated militarily, negotiated the terms by which they ended their revolt, and secured the assurances they sought before final agreement.

75 On maroon societies see Price, Richard, ed., Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996);Google Scholar and Jane Landers, “The Central African Presence.” There are a number of studies of particular maroon communities; in English see Carroll, Patrick, “Mandinga: The Evolution of a Mexican Runaway Slave Community, 1735–1827,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 19:4 (October 1977), pp. 483–505;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Taylor, William B., “The Foundation of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Amapa,” The Americas 26:4 (April 1970), pp. 439–446.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

76 The best overview of Spanish-indigenous relations in the borderlands of North and South America is found in Weber’s, David J. two important volumes, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992);Google Scholar and Bárbaros. Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).

77 There are numerous parallels and precedents for interactions between Christian Spaniards and others in the course of their expansion during the middle ages, both within the Iberian peninsula and as they moved into the islands of the Mediterranean and Atlantic; see, for example, two works by Fernández-Armesto, Felipe, Before Columbus. Exploration and Colonisation from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1229–1492 (London: Macmillan Education, 1987);Google Scholar and The Canary Islands after the Conquest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).