Indian Slavery Once Thrived in New Mexico | Latinos Are Finding Family Ties to It

 New York Times, January 28, 2018 | Simon Romero

Lenny Trujillo made a startling discovery when he began researching his descent from one of New Mexico’s pioneering Hispanic families: One of his ancestors was a slave

St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Abiquiú, N.M., a village settled by former Indian slaves, or

Genízaros, in the 18th century. Credit: Adria Malcolm for The New York Times 

ALBUQUERQUE — Lenny Trujillo made a startling discovery when he began researching his descent from one of New Mexico’s pioneering Hispanic families:

One of his ancestors was a slave.

Mr. Trujillo, 66, a retired postal worker who lives in Los Angeles, said:

“I didn’t know about New Mexico’s slave trade, so I was just stunned. Then I discovered how slavery was a defining feature of my family’s history.”

Mr. Trujillo is one of many Latinos who are finding ancestral connections to a flourishing slave trade on the blood-soaked frontier now known as the American Southwest.

Their captive forebears were Native Americans — slaves frequently known as Genízaros (pronounced heh-NEE-sah-ros) who were sold to Hispanic families when the region was under Spanish control from the 16th to 19th centuries. Many Indian slaves remained in bondage when Mexico and later the United States governed New Mexico.

The revelations have prompted some painful personal reckonings over identity and heritage.

But they have also fueled a larger, politically charged debate on what it means to be Hispanic and Native American.

A growing number of Latinos who have made such discoveries are embracing their indigenous backgrounds, challenging a long tradition in New Mexico in which families prize Spanish ancestry. Some are starting to identify as Genízaros.

Historians estimate that Genízaros accounted for as much as one-third of New Mexico’s population of 29,000 in the late 18th century.

Floyd E. Trujillo, 83, right, swabbed the inside of his mouth for a DNA sample as his son Virgil spoke with Miguel A. Tórrez, a genealogist. Credit: Adria Malcolm for The New York Times

Gregorio Gonzáles, 29, an anthropologist and self-described Genízaro who writes about the legacies of Indian enslavement, said:

“We’re discovering things that complicate the hell out of our history, demanding that we reject the myths we’ve been taught.” 

Those legacies were born of a tortuous story of colonial conquest and forced assimilation.

New Mexico, which had the largest number of sedentary Indians north of central Mexico, emerged as a coveted domain for slavers almost as soon as the Spanish began settling here in the 16th century, according to Andrés Reséndez, a historian who details the trade in his 2016 book, “The Other Slavery.”

Colonists initially took local Pueblo Indians as slaves, leading to an uprising in 1680 that temporarily pushed the Spanish out of New Mexico.

The trade then evolved to include not just Hispanic traffickers but horse-mounted Comanche and Ute warriors, who raided the settlements of Apache, Kiowa, Jumano, Pawnee and other peoples. 

They took captives, many of them children plucked from their homes, and sold them at auctions in village plazas.

The Spanish crown tried to prohibit slavery in its colonies, but traffickers often circumvented the ban by labeling their captives in parish records as criados, or servants.

The trade endured even decades after the Mexican-American War, when the United States took control of much of the Southwest in the 1840s.

Seeking to strengthen the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in 1865, Congress passed the Peonage Act of 1867 after learning of propertied New Mexicans owning hundreds and perhaps thousands of Indian slaves, mainly Navajo women and children.

But scholars say the measure, which specifically targeted New Mexico, did little for many slaves in the territory.

Many Hispanic families in New Mexico have long known that they had indigenous ancestry, even though some here still call themselves “Spanish” to emphasize their Iberian ties and to differentiate themselves from the state’s 23 federally recognized tribes, as well as from Mexican and other Latin American immigrants.

But genetic testing is offering a glimpse into a more complex story.

The DNA of Hispanic people from New Mexico is often in the range of 30 to 40 percent Native American, according to Miguel A. Tórrez, 42, a research technologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and one of New Mexico’s most prominent genealogists.

He and other researchers cross-reference DNA tests with baptismal records, marriage certificates, census reports, oral histories, ethnomusicology findings, land titles and other archival documents.

Mr. Tórrez’s own look into his origins shows how these searches can produce unexpected results. 

He found one ancestor who was probably Ojibwe, from lands around the Great Lakes, roughly a thousand miles away, and another of Greek origin among the early colonizers claiming New Mexico for Spain.

“I have Navajo, Chippewa, Greek and Spanish blood lines,” Mr. Tórrez, who calls himself a mestizo, a term referring to mixed ancestry. 

“I can’t say I’m indigenous any more than I can say I’m Greek, but it’s both fascinating and disturbing to see how various cultures came together in New Mexico.”

Revelations about how Indian enslavement was a defining feature of colonial New Mexico can be unsettling for some in the state, where the authorities have often tried to perpetuate a narrative of relatively peaceful coexistence between Hispanics, Indians and Anglos, as non-Hispanic whites are generally called here.

Pointing to their history, some descendants of Genízaros are coming together to argue that they deserve the same recognition as Native tribes in the United States.

One such group in Colorado, the 200-member Genízaro Affiliated Nations, organizes annual dances to commemorate their heritage.

“It’s not about blood quantum or DNA testing for us, since those things can be inaccurate measuring sticks,” said David Atekpatzin Young, 62, the organization’s tribal chairman, who traces his ancestry to Apache and Pueblo peoples. 

“We know who we are, and what we want is sovereignty and our land back.”

Some here object to calling Genízaros slaves, arguing that the authorities in New Mexico were relatively flexible in absorbing Indian captives.

In an important distinction with African slavery in parts of the Americas, Genízaros could sometimes attain economic independence and even assimilate into the dominant Hispanic classes, taking the surnames of their masters and embracing Roman Catholicism.

Genízaros and their offspring sometimes escaped or served out their terms of service, then banded together to forge buffer settlements against Comanche raids.

Offering insight into how Indian captives sought to escape their debased status, linguists trace the origins of the word Genízaro to the Ottoman Empire’s janissaries, the special soldier class of Christians from the Balkans who converted to Islam, and were sometimes referred to as slaves.

Moisés Gonzáles, a Genízaro professor of architecture at the University of New Mexico, has identified an array of Genízaro outposts that endure in the state, including the villages Las Trampas and San Miguel del Vado.

Some preserve traditions that reflect their Genízaro origins, and like other products of colonialism, many are cultural amalgams of customs and motifs from sharply disparate worlds.

Each December in the village of Alcalde, for instance, performers in headdresses stage the Matachines dance, thought by scholars to fuse the theme of Moorish-Christian conflict in medieval Spain with indigenous symbolism evoking the Spanish conquest of the New World.

Brienna Martinez performed the Matachines dance in Alcalde, N.M. Credit: Adria Malcolm for The New York Times

In Abiquiú, settled by Genízaros in the 18th century, people don face paint and feathers every November to perform a “captive dance” about the village’s Indian origins — on a day honoring a Catholic saint.

Miguel A. Tórrez conducts the El Pueblo de Abiquiú DNA and Ethnographic Study, which examines the backgrounds of people who either identify as Genízaros or are descendants of Genízaros in Abiquiú. Credit: Adria Malcolm for The New York Times

Mr. Tórrez, the genealogist, said,

“Some Natives say those in Abiquiú are pretend Indians. But who’s to say that the descendants of Genízaros, of people who were once slaves, can’t reclaim their culture?”

Efforts by some Genízaro descendants to call themselves Indians instead of Latinos point to a broader debate over how Native Americans are identified, involving often contentious factors like tribal membership, what constitutes indigenous cultural practices and the light skin color of some Hispanics with Native ancestry.

Some Native Americans also chafe at the gains some Hispanics here have sought by prioritizing their ancestral ties to European colonizers.

Pointing to the breadth of the Southwest’s slave trade, some historians have also documented how Hispanic settlers were captured and enslaved by Native American traffickers, and sometimes went on to embrace the cultures of their Comanche, Pueblo or Navajo masters.

Kim TallBear, an anthropologist at the University of Alberta, cautioned against using DNA testing alone to determine indigenous identity. She emphasized that such tests can point generally to Native ancestry somewhere in the Americas while failing to pinpoint specific tribal origins.

Ms. TallBear, a member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate tribe of South Dakota who writes about tribal belonging and genetic testing, said:

“There’s a conflation of race and tribe that’s infuriating, really. I don’t think ancestry alone is sufficient to define someone as indigenous.”

The discovery of indigenous slave ancestry can be anything but straightforward, as Mr. Trujillo, the former postal worker, learned.

First, he found his connection to a Genízaro man in the village of Abiquiú. Delving further into 18th century baptismal records, he then found that his ancestor somehow broke away from forced servitude to purchase three slaves of his own.

“I was just blown away to find that I had a slaver and slaves in my family tree,” Mr. Trujillo said. 

“That level of complexity is too much for some people, but it’s part of the story of who I am.”

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Related:

• The Genízaro Pueblo of Abiquiú, Russel Albert Daniels, American Indian, Summer 2020 | Vol. 21, No. 2.

My Great-Grandfather Found Buried in U.S. Military Cemetery in Mexico City!

Last fall, our seven-year-old grandson in Chicago brought home a school assignment to construct a Family Tree, which prompted his maternal grandmother (maiden name, Kingman; born in Chicago, raised in California) to dig out the Kingman Geneology prepared decades ago by my aunt (father's sister).

I read with interest of the arrival of Henry Kingman and his family, listed as members of the 'Hull Party' that landed in Massachusetts in 1635. Setting aside for the moment the displacement of Native Americans, I noted their settlement of land in what is today the town of Weymouth—after Plymouth, the oldest town in Massachusetts. I read of the successive generations of Kingmans living and farming in Massachusetts and of their eventual relocation to Clifton, a farming community in southern Illinois.

But the next entry simply stopped me in my tracks:

In the 1890's, Charles Henry Kingman worked for Lewis Co., mine operators, in Mexico City; died of pneumonia and buried in Mexico City. Died March 19, 1900. A gentle and good-natured man. 

It is hard enough to take in that I wasn't aware that my great-grandfather is buried in Mexico City, but it turns out that there's more:

Barry Kingman [my grandfather] born March 19, 1875, went to Mexico with his father and worked for Lewis Co. at Zacatecas [famous for its mines of silver, lead, gold, copper, zinc and cadmium]; when he heard of his father's illness, Barry went down to Mexico City to be with him; Charles died on Barry's twenty-fifth birthday.

I wonder what father and son might think of the fact that 118 years later their great-granddaughter and granddaughter would be about to complete ten years of living in Mexico. What greater testimony could be offered of the many links between our two countries than this—the internment in Mexico of a U.S. citizen coupled with the long-term Mexican residency of his great-granddaughter?

Quite naturally, the first question that popped into my head was:

What on earth was great-grandfather Charles Henry doing in Mexico? 

We are familiar with mining's difficult, painful history in Mexico—a business practice still carried on by today's transnational mining companies. But it began five hundred years ago with the Spanish subjugation of the land's indigenous peoples, pressing the men into forced labor in the gold and silver mines. The extracted wealth was sent back to Spain, where the monarchy used it to finance their imperial exploits. It is understandable, then, my first thought was, 'Oh, no—not mining!'

Fortunately, I am married to a real history buff. When I gave Reed the date of Charles Henry's death, he was quick to pinpoint it as taking place during the 35-year dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz—the period known as the 'Porfiriato'. [For more information, see post in Reed's Mexico Ambles blog.]

Díaz got himself "re-elected" president of Mexico over a thirty-five year period (1877-1911). For the upper-class, it was an era of political stability, industrialization and economic growth. For the lower classes, it was a time of exclusion and suppression of protests.

Díaz maintained control through "Pan o palo", "bread or stick", an informal system based on personal loyalty using patronage and repression. His motto was "little politics and plenty of administration."

The epoch was suddenly brought to an end with the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in November 1910, when various forces of social, political and economic opposition exploded. [Emphasis added.]

So it seems that the business activity of the Lewis Mining Co. took place at the invitation of Porfirio Díaz, part of his strategy to bring in foreign expertise to assist in industrializing Mexico for the purpose of promoting economic growth. In yet another historical twist, twenty years ago (1992-1994), I had a two-year consulting project with the Subdirectorate of Natural Gas at Pemex (Mexican Oil Company) that focused on improving work efficiency.

It seems that the more this story unfolds, the more layers are uncovered—even including a certain ironic twist. To wit, I discovered a newspaper article titled 'Ruined by a Wicked Partner', dated November 25, 1889, reporting the filing of a legal action by Charles Henry Kingman in Chicago Superior Court against his business partner. The article gives Charles Henry's account of how the partner defrauded and bankrupted the Kingmans' thriving wholesale grocery business.

Hence, in an ironic reversal of today's dominant reality, it seems that in the wake of the devastating business loss, Charles Henry and his elder son came to Mexico to recoup the family's finances.

A little more digging, and I quickly discovered that great-grandfather is buried in the Mexico City National Cemetery. It should be quickly noted that 'National' is from a U.S. perspective. In Spanish, its name is the Panteón Norteamericano, North American [i.e., U.S.] Cemetery. It is maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission, ABMC, under the Department of Defense of the U.S. government.

A recent visit by our elder daughter, who lives in Chicago, seemed like a perfect time to make a visit.  So on a sunny Sunday morning, we all headed to the cemetery in the San Rafael neighborhood, which is one of the upscale neighborhoods created just west of Mexico City's Historic Center toward the end of the Porfiriato to provide housing for the Mexican and foreign business class. 

Stepping through the gate, visitors are greeted by plants trimmed to spell out the acronym: ABMC.

ABMC
American Battle Monuments Commission

The rectangular one-acre space that makes up the cemetery is beautifully landscaped and meticulously maintained.

The white stone monument at the south end is flanked by two flagpoles, each flying the U.S. flag.

It is forbidden to walk on the grass, so any capture of the monument
flanked by U.S. flags, of necessity, includes the gardener's lawnmower. 

It seems somehow fitting for the lawnmower to be part of the photo. The gardener, a kindly man, turned off the sprinklers so we could walk along the sidewalk, looking for my great-grandfather's crypt. He also tried to help us locate the crypt, but, in the end, it was our elder daughter who found it.

Charles Henry Kingman
Born, January 8, 1845; he spent his childhood on a farm in Southern Illinois.
He served in the Civil War (Illinois Regiment, Union Army),
which made him eligible to be buried in the U.S. military cemetery.
He died on March 19, 1900.

Monument to unidentified U.S. Soldiers killed
During Mexican-American War (1846-1848),
known in Mexico as the American Intervention. 

From the ABMC website:

"The Mexico City National Cemetery was established in 1851 by the U.S. Congress to gather the dead of the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) that lay in the nearby fields and to provide burial space for Americans that died in the vicinity. In 1851, the remains of 750 U.S. dead were gathered and buried in a common grave at this cemetery.

Buried at the Mexico City National Cemetery are American servicemen who served either during the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), Civil War or Spanish American War [Cuba]. 

The remains of 813 Americans are bruied in wall crypts lining two sides of the cemetery. The cemetery was closed to further burials in 1923."

East Crypt Wall viewed from West Crypt Wall.

The sidewalks around the park are lined by park benches which invite quiet reflection.

Mexican couple walking slowly along the West Wall,
reading the markers as they go.

Toward the end of our visit, a middle-aged, probably professional Mexican couple arrived and began walking slowly along the sidewalks, taking time to read names on the crypts. After I took this photo, I approached the couple and asked whether they had a relative buried in the cemetery.  When they answered in the negative, I couldn't help blurting out, "My great-grandfather is buried here. He worked in Mexico City near the end of the Porfiriato and died here of pneumonia."

Their gentle acceptance of my information was yet one more reminder of the tremendous amabilidad, kindness the vast majority of Mexicans accord to USians who show respect and demonstrate interest in Mexico's culture, history, and people.

On this note, we concluded our visit to the final resting place of my great-grandfather, our two daughters' great-great-grandfather, and our grandchildren's great-great-great-grandfather. 

We leave the cemetery carrying with us all that the cycle in our family history connotes—a kind of ironic turning of the tables that upends many of the assumptions about the relations between people in the country of our birth and those of our host country.

Related posts in our family of blogs:

• Geography: Ground of Mexico's History and Culture (Voices for Mother Earth);
• Mexico Culture: ex-Convento Churubusco - Part II Military History (Jenny's Journal of Mexican Culture);
• The Porfiriato: French Culture Conquers Mexico City (Mexico City Ambles).