145 The boundary-setting function of the treaty was important because, up until this point, Mexico and the United States had disputed Texas’s southern boundary. Larson, New Mexico’s Quest for Statehood, 46.
146 Griswold del Castillo, Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 46–53.
147 As originally proposed, Article IX read, in part: “The Mexicans [in the ceded territory] . . . shall be incorporated into the Union of the United States as soon as possible. . . . With respect to political rights, their condition shall be on an equality with that of the inhabitants of the other territories of the United States.” Griswold del Castillo, Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 46 (emphasis added).
148 Ibid. (emphasis added).
149 Ibid., 50 (quoting a pamphlet titled “Observations on the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,” authored by Mexican senator Manuel Cresencio Rejón, who led the opposition to ratification). In the end, the Mexicans ratified the treaty by a vote of fifty-one to thirty-five in the lower chamber and thirty-three to four in the upper chamber. Ibid., 53.
150 Ibid., 33, 62–72.
151 Historian Samuel Sisneros has done some helpful research; see Sisneros, “Los Emigrantes Nuevomexicanos”; see also Bancroft, History of the Pacific States, 472; Twitchell, History of the Military Occupation, 290.
152 Griswold del Castillo estimates that two thousand Mexican men took this route, but he does not provide sources for this number. Griswold del Castillo, Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 65. Although figures are difficult to come by, it appears that many Mexicans living in New Mexico exercised this option. Twitchell reports that “a large number” took this option and that that number included “many names of prominent men.” Twitchell, History of the Military Occupation, 65.
153 Twitchell, History of the Military Occupation, 29n216; see also Davis, El Gringo, 331–32.
154 For a discussion of the relationship between state and federal citizenship generally, see Kettner, Development of American Citizenship, 224 (noting that the Constitution’s framers “failed to grapple with the relationship of state and national citizenship”).
155 American Insurance Company v. 356 Bales of Cotton, 26 U.S. 511, 542 (1828).
156 People v. De La Guerra, 40 Cal. 311 (1870).
157 Act of September 9, 1850, Ch. 49, 9 Stat. 446 (1850).
158 Larson, New Mexico’s Quest for Statehood, 56.
159 As historian Howard Lamar has noted, the congressional act establishing New Mexico as a territory “was an internal colonial system, a device for eventual self-government, a guarantor of property, and a bill of rights rolled into one act.” Lamar, Far Southwest, 98.
160 See, generally, Ramirez, “Hispanic Political Elite.”
161 For analyses that adopt a model of annexation rather than colonialism, see Gonzáles, “Inverted Subnationalism”; Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans. These models are not mutually exclusive, but rather probably operated together to explain the region’s development under American rule.
Chapter 2. Where Mexicans Fit in the New American Racial Order
1 According to some sources, Estevan (sometimes spelled Esteban) spoke six indigenous languages. The First Immigrants: From Slave to Explorer, permanent exhibition at the Arab American National Museum, Dearborn, MI.
2 Accounts written by the Spanish explorers consistently refer to Estevan by first name only, suggesting that his Spanish contemporaries viewed him as racially subordinate. In some accounts, the Spanish diminutive of Estevan (Estevanico) was used, perhaps similarly connoting lower social status in the group. See Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 39–40; Prince, Concise History, 59–65; Bancroft, History of the Pacific States, 27–34.
3 Sando, Pueblo Nations, 50.
4 Ibid., 51–53.
5 Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 39–40. At least one Zuni oral history account is quite similar to the Spanish story of Estevan’s death. Ilahiane, “Estevan De Dorantes,” 6.
6 Ilahiane, “Estevan De Dorantes,” 7.
7 Ibid., 2.
8 Menchaca, Recovering History, 70.
9 Ibid., 43, 71–72.
10 The First Immigrants: From Slave to Explorer.
11 Ibid.
12 Ilahiane, “Estevan De Dorantes,” 8.
13 Ibid., 2–3, 9.
14 Ibid., 3.
15 Menchaca, Recovering History, 42–43 (noting the difficulty of knowing the precise number of African slaves, since the official census varied according to the age and health of slaves [e.g., healthy children were counted as one-quarter of a person, and so on]).
16 Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 44.
17 Gutiérrez reports that, in the winter of 1540 (the Spaniards’ first in New Mexico), “Coronado’s troops extracted blankets and corn from the Tiguex pueblos by force, . . . satisfied their lust with Indian women,” executed a hundred warriors, and massacred hundreds more. Ibid., 45.
18 Alonso, Thread of Blood, 53 (emphasis added).
19 Ibid.
20 Menchaca, Recovering History, 61.
21 Knight, “Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo,” 72.
22 Alonso, Thread of Blood, 67; Wade, Blackness and Race Mixture, 10–11, 97; White, “It’s Your Misfortune,” 14.
23 Alonso, Thread of Blood, 65–67; Kraemer, “Dynamic Ethnicity,” 96; Menchaca, Recovering History, 66.
24 Alonso, Thread of Blood, 54.
25 Menchaca, Recovering History, 66.
26 Legal scholars Devon Carbado and Mitu Gulati define “identity performance” as “the choices that person makes about how to present her difference” (i.e., racial difference). Carbado and Gulati, “Fifth Black Woman,” 701; see also Carbado and Gulati, Acting White?; Butler, Bodies That Matter. The larger point is that racial identity is not (and has not been historically) merely about a person’s membership in a particular, ascribed category, but also about how a person chooses to present his or her racial identity, which can vary in different contexts.
27 Weber, Foreigners in Their Native Land, 33–35 (“First Census of Los Angeles, 1781”).
28 Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 103.
29 Bancroft, History of the Pacific States, 36; Prince, Concise History, 67.
30 Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 103.
31 Ibid.
32 See ibid., 103 (noting that “nearly 90 percent of the population that was not wholly Indian was native born in New Mexico”).
33 Historian José Antonio Esquibel describes the period from 1693 to 1720 as “the formative era of New Mexico’s [Spanish] colonial society.” Esquibel, “Formative Era,” 64–65.
34 Rodríguez, Matachines Dance, 161n2; see also Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 130–40. All but one Pueblo community (Isleta) participated in the revolt.
35 Esquibel, “Formative Era,” 65.
36 Ibid., 66–67.
37 Ibid., 68–76.
38 Ibid., 68–69.
39 My analysis draws heavily from Gutiérrez, although he puts genízaros at the bottom of the hierarchy. Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 148–49.
40 Ebright and Hendricks define genízaros broadly to include “as the primary markers of Genízaro status the elements of servitude or captivity and Indian blood. Such a definition includes nomadic Indians who lost their tribal identity, spent time as captives and/or servants, and who were living on the margins of Spanish society.” Ebright and Hendricks, Witches of Abiquiu, 4; see also Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 149–51, 154.
41 Kraemer, “Dynamic Ethnicity,” 96.
42 The same census reported nearly 7,300 Pueblo Indians living in eighteen communities. Ibid., 90.
43 Recent studies of Hispanics in Colorado’s San Luis Valley—a region settled by Mexican Americans from northern New Mexico in the mid-1800s and whose current Hispanic residents descend almost exclusively from those early settlers—show conclusively that this population derived historically from mating between indigenous females and European males. One study concluded that, based on DNA variation, “the Hispanic population of the San Luis Valley today more cl
osely resembles an Amerindian population . . . than it does a European population. Over 85 percent of San Luis Valley Hispanics tested possess pure Amerindian/Asian haplotypes.” Merriweather et al., “Mitochondrial versus Nuclear Admixture Estimates,” 157; see also Bonilla et al., “Admixture in the Hispanics of the San Luis Valley.”
44 Kraemer, “Dynamic Ethnicity,” 90.
45 Esquibel, “Formative Era,” 66; see also Kraemer, “Dynamic Ethnicity,” 86.
46 Sánchez, Telling Identities, 56–58.
47 Menchaca, Recovering History, 158.
48 For a summary, see ibid., 158–63.
49 Ortiz, Pueblo Indians of North America, 80; see also Hall and Weber, “Mexican Liberals,” 19.
50 Sando, Pueblo Nations, 83.
51 Ortiz, Pueblo Indians of North America, 80.
52 See, generally, Weber, Foreigners in Their Native Land, 88–90; Zoraida Vázquez, México al Tiempo, 29 31.
53 White, “It’s Your Misfortune,” 65.
54 Historian Deena J. González has done the most comprehensive research to date on the aggregate trends of intermarriage between Mexican females and Euro-American males. She found that no more than 2 percent of Mexican women were married to Euro-American men in Santa Fe in 1850 and 1870. She concludes that historians have tended to exaggerate the extent of such intermarriage. González, Refusing the Favor, 72–74, 113–14; see also Deutsch, No Separate Refuge.
55 Here I am using “Anglo-American” to refer not strictly to Americans of British descent, but more generally to the racial legacy of the early British colonists in North America. I also use it to emphasize the nineteenth-century development of Anglo-Saxon race consciousness as the foundation for American white supremacy. See, generally, Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny.
56 On the history of Anglo-American contact with Indians, see, generally, Newton et al., Cohen’s Handbook, 6–84; Zinn, People’s History; see also Cornell and Hartmann, Ethnicity and Race, 110; Fredrickson, Racism, 68–69.
57 Perea et al., Race and Races, 181 (quoting Washington).
58 Ibid., 184 (quoting Jefferson).
59 Ibid., 176.
60 Zinn, People’s History, 23.
61 Fredrickson, Racism, 80–81; see also Bell, Race, Racism, and American Law, 33.
62 Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny, 230.
63 See, for example, ibid., 215.
64 Merk, Manifest Destiny, 38–39.
65 Foley, White Scourge, 5 (emphasis added).
66 For analyses of the genre of travel literature as perpetuating stereotypes of Mexicans, see González, Refusing the Favor, 44–65; see also, generally, Paredes, “Mexican Image.”
67 See, generally, Streeby, “American Sensations.”
68 Davis, El Gringo, 17.
69 Ibid., 22, 28, 114–15.
70 Ibid., 157–58.
71 Ibid., 215–16.
72 Ibid., 316, 325.
73 Ibid., 217.
74 Ibid., 221. This and other contemporary accounts by Euro-American men are the source of an enduring stereotype of Latinas as innately oversexed and sexually promiscuous.
75 I do not invoke the word “progressive” to imply that Prince’s views were liberal or consensual on their own terms, although they were relative to the dominant racial narrative. Nor is my use of the term in any way connected with the Progressive Era of the early twentieth century.
76 For a general discussion of “dominant” racial theories and how they change, see Omi and Winant, Racial Formation, 11.
77 Some analyses place Indians higher than Mexican Americans in New Mexico’s post–World War II racial hierarchy. Anthropologist Sylvia Rodríguez describes “‘the tri-ethnic trap’—a situation in which Hispanos, unable to advance beyond clear-cut secondary economic status and faced with the steady and irrevocable loss of their traditional land base, must abide by a tourism-engendered Anglo glorification of Indian culture, as well as the federal protection and even restoration of Indian lands, sometimes at the expense of Hispano ownership.” Rodríguez, “Land, Water, and Ethnic Identity,” 321; see also Masco, Nuclear Borderlands, 187.
78 In a May 1879 article, all Indians are entirely omitted from the description of New Mexico’s population. In a November 1876 article, the New York Times described the population in these terms: “They are about seven parts Spanish, more familiarly known as ‘greasers’ to two parts civilized Indian and one part American.”
79 Mexicans in New Mexico were portrayed as lazy, resistant to progress, and generally unwilling to do the work required to fully exploit the region’s agricultural, mining, and ranching potential. New York Times, November 7, 1876; May 19, 1879.
80 For example, a front-page article in 1876 began with the sentence, “The people of New Mexico do not blend well,” and continued by describing the conflict between “greasers” and “Americans.” New York Times, November 7, 1876.
81 Another New York Times editor concluded that “New-Mexico can wait [for admission to the Union]—not merely until [Congress reconvenes], but until it has population enough to constitute a fairly large and intelligent town meeting.” New York Times, June 29, 1876.
82 “The Mexicans predominating in the population 10 to 1, the minority, represented by the Americans or whites, naturally falls in with the customs of the majority in religious observances.” New York Times, May 19, 1879 (emphasis added).
83 Ibid.
84 New York Times, November 7, 1876.
85 Ibid.
86 For examples, see New York Times, January 26 and February 6, 1882; July 8, 1885. American studies scholar Gabriel Meléndez analyzes an 1899 article in the Atlantic Monthly that was titled, simply, “The Greaser,” concluding that “the modern American spirit would be likely to predicate the downfall of the Greaser, upon one fact, that he is lacking in ‘enterprise.’” Meléndez, So All Is Not Lost, 43–44. “Greaser” also was used regularly, if less frequently, by the New Mexico press, particularly in the southeastern part of the territory. In 1906, for example, the Hagerman (NM) Messenger wrote that “the greaser is doomed; he is too lazy to keep up; and smells too badly to be endured.” Stratton, Territorial Press, 132.
87 For a description of the law, see Haney López, White by Law, 145.
88 New York Times, January 26, 1882 (emphasis original).
89 Ibid.
90 Ibid.
91 New York Times, February 28, 1882 (emphasis added).
92 See, generally, McWilliams, North from Mexico; Montgomery, The Spanish Redemption.
93 Prince, Concise History, 20.
94 Prince had previously rejected President Hayes’s offer of the governorship of the Idaho Territory. Walter, “Ten Years After,” 372.
95 Ibid.
96 Prince reported this tally of cases in his letter of resignation to President Arthur, May 9, 1882.
97 Prince showed his political ambitions early, resigning his judgeship in 1882 to run unsuccessfully for election to be New Mexico’s nonvoting delegate to Congress, arguably the most important elected position in the territory.
98 Larson, New Mexico’s Quest for Statehood, 144.
99 Walter, “Ten Years After,” 375.
100 A friend of the Princes for nearly twenty-five years, Paul Walter would later write that their parties were New Mexico’s high society and remark that a wide range of New Mexicans attended these soirees, “including even Indians.” Ibid., 374.
101 Gómez, “Race, Colonialism, and Criminal Law,” 1186.
102 Territory v. Romine, 2 N.M. 114 (1881).
103 Lyles v. Texas, 41 Tex. 172 (1874).
104 Territory v. Romine, 2 N.M. 114, 123 (1881).
105 Ibid.
106 New Mexico Territory had to “look” like states in other respects, as well, including having railroads, public buildings, mining, agricultural cultivation, and institutions such as a university, a penitentiary, and an insane asylum—all of which, Prince noted, had been established in the territory by 1890. Prince, �
��Claims to Statehood,” 348, 350.
107 Ibid., 346.
108 Walter, “Ten Years After,” 373.
109 Ibid., 374.
110 Prince, Historical Sketches of New Mexico, 347.
111 Stephen Elkins, a Euro-American attorney who was then serving as New Mexico’s nonvoting delegate to Congress, had made a similar argument in a speech to Congress in May 1874. Summarizing his argument, Robert Larson said, “Elkins made full use of the historical argument that New Mexico was entitled to admission ‘by reason of the promises and assurances made by our Government,’ previous to the ratification of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo” (a reference to Kearny’s speeches on the eve of the American occupation). Larson, New Mexico’s Quest for Statehood, 117. In 1889, New Mexico was represented by Antonio Joseph as its delegate, who again made the argument that the history of the war and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo obligated Congress to advance New Mexico to statehood. Ibid., 154.
Manifest Destinies, Second Edition Page 29