A Colonial Cacicazgo : the Mendozas of Seventeenth-Century

The cacicazgo, or indigenous lordship, was a pivotal institution in colonial Mexican Indian pueblos. Caciques, or Indian nobles, played a role, both in the largely indigenous world of the pueblo and in the regional economy that was dominated by Spaniards. This subject of this essay is the analysis of the evolution and daily operation and of a cacicazgo from the Indian settlement of Tepexí de la Seda near the city of Puebla de los Ángeles and the life of its caciques in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the sixteenth century the cacicazgo was in upheaval because of discord between the cacicazgos and their dependent Indians. A number of long-running accounts from the 1620s record in detail the daily operations of the cacicazgo of Doña Ana de Santa Bárbara of the Mendoza family, thus illustrating how caciques negotiated their positions and coped with their lives and the changes in it.

During the transitional situation of the early sixteenth century following the military conquest in highland Mexico, Spaniards and Indians had to find a way to create a more stable and sustainable society.This transition involved a wide range of social and economic interactions that eventually resulted in a new society with a place for both Spaniards and Indians.Instead of the usual picture one imagines of ruthless Spaniards, local authorities and clerics lording it over defeated indigenous peasants, one finds in the documents evidence of indigenous lordships, or cacicazgos that blended indigenous and Spanish social and economic characteristics.The cacicazgo as an institution had developed from the lordly domains as the Indians had known them before the Spaniards arrived.However, in order to survive, the caciques had to adapt to the changing world and participate in the new activities colonial society was creating.The caciques played a pivotal, but evolving role in colonial society on the crossroads of the Spaniards and Indian worlds that, officially, were kept separated in colonial legislation (Chance, 1996a(Chance, , 1996b(Chance, , 2003;;Hoekstra 1992Hoekstra , 1993;;Lockhart 1992, 59-130;Menegus Bornemann 2005, Ouweneel 1996, 212-252 and 1995;Perkins 2005;Taylor 1973;Terraciano 2008, 182-197).
Most studies focus primarily on the landownership relations of rural players such as hacienda-owners, indigenous peasants and caciques.Research is mostly based on lawsuits concerning lands and testaments.The institutional situation was largely settled by laws, vice regal decrees, Indian petitions, and actions of Spanish authorities and lawsuits.Research has also made it clear that throughout Mexico, many indigenous cacique families were able to continue their cacicazgos in the colonial period.However, the inner workings of the cacicazgo remain a largely unexplored terrain, not in the last place because of the shortage of sources.The social position of the cacique was intricate and involved many parties.Nevertheless, it did shape social relations.This essay explores the workings of the cacicazgo of the cacique family of Doña Ana de Santa Bárbara of the pueblo de indios of Tepexí de la Seda (now Tepexí de Rodríguez), just south of the city of Puebla de los Ángeles.
The seventeenth-century records available for this cacique family make it unusual.It is rare to find such detailed accounts from cacicazgos in mid-colonial times, but in this case we have records of a lawsuit for the partition of goods of Doña Ana de Santa Bárbara following her death in 1620.They make it possible to follow the financial dealings of this cacicazgo and its overall structure in some detail for a period of five years, from the beginning of the lawsuit in 1621 to its closure in 1626.The records give us a more complete insight in the workings of the cacicazgo and how its members interacted with society.This is significant, because cacicazgos were of central importance in pueblos de indios, or towns consisting of a number of dispersed settlements with one head town (cabecera) and subject towns or hamlets (sujetos).In the pueblos, caciques held land and lordship over Indians.Cacicazgos also gained in significance in the wider society, as caciques used their land for Spanish-style agriculture (especially raising livestock) and commercial relations with Spanish traders, clerics and authorities.

Sixteenth-century cacicazgo troubles in Tepexí
In the sixteenth century, Tepexí de la Seda was a pueblo de indios in the sparsely populated, mountainous, temperate area near the Mixteca region, called 'the Mixteca' for short.It had developed out of the pre-Hispanic pueblo of Tepexí, which had probably been a Popoluca fortress.In the mid-sixteenth century silk had been cultivated in Tepexí, hence the name of Tepexí de la Seda, but this was prohibited later on.There were a few Spanish residents in the area who owned livestock farms.The Spaniards were not part of the Indian pueblo, but belonged to the corregimiento (Spanish administrative department) also called Tepexí de la Seda.There was a monastery of Dominicans in the pueblo of Tepexí that also fulfilled parochial tasks.The pueblo was in the border area between Nahua and Mixtec territory, inhabited by both Nahua and Popoluca speaking Indians.Sources give the impression that the two groups lived apart in different villages and hamlets.The population of Tepexí was decreasing like it was in the rest of New Spain in the sixteenth century.We do not have sufficient data, but around 1570 Tepexí had some 3,800 tributarios (tribute paying Indians, roughly equivalent to households).By 1620 this number had decreased to 1,118.If we take the usual 4.5 persons as a conversion factor for the number of tributarios to the entire population, this results in 17,100 individuals in 1570 and 5,031 in 1620 (Slicher van Bath 1981, page 14 and 217).The caciques of the Mendoza family under consideration here were oriented towards the city of Puebla de los Ángeles at some 60 km distance.They also had contacts with caciques from the nearby pueblos of Tepeaca, Tecali and Acatzingo.
As in most pueblos de indios, there were several cacique families with their own cacicazgos in the pueblo of Tepexí in the sixteenth century, though it is not easy to get a complete overview of them.In the sixteenth century there was a large dispute among the caciques of Tepexí.The lawsuit from 1596 that was meant to settle relations among all caciques mentions the names of the families of Moctezuma, Guzman, Mendoza, Luna, Ceynos (or Sainos), de la Cruz and Esquivel.Whether they were all the caciques from that time, or just the families that were in dispute with each other, we do not know.According to Cruz Pazos, in the eighteenth century there were still four cacique families: Moctezuma y Cortés, Mendoza y Luna, de la Cruz and Cebrián.So obviously some lineages died out and some merged through marriages and inheritance.Apart from the caciques, there were lower nobles in the pueblos, who were called principales.They had some privileges and acted sometimes as headmen and were usually associated with and subordinate to a cacique family.Most Indians, however, were commoners, called macehuales (from the Nahuatl word macehualli) or tributarios in Spanish (ANG-T-9;Cruz Pazos 2007, 68-69).
It is clear that the Mendoza family had played an important role in Tepexí since prehispanic times.The family received the Mendoza name from clerics at the time of conversion to Christianity, somewhere in the early years after the conquest in 1521.Their forefather's name was Matzatzin (Jäcklein 1978;Cruz Pazos 2007, 2008aand 2008b). 1 When Doña Ana de Santa Bárbara, the matriarch of the family, died in 1620, the records do not mention her age.It must have been considerable as she had adult grandchildren, and she had played an important role in some sixteenth-century lawsuits concerning her cacicazgo.
The partition of goods was not the first time this cacicazgo appeared in the records.In the sixteenth century, there had been a number of lawsuits that related directly to the cacicazgo, in which Doña Ana de Santa Bárbara was the acting cacica (the female form of cacique).In the 1590s, and perhaps even as early as the 1570s, Doña Ana de Santa Bárbara was already a widow when she appeared in the sources.She had inherited her cacicazgo from Don Martín de la Cruz and Doña Isabel de Guzman, her parents.In their turn, they had inherited the cacicazgo from Don Pedro Matzatzin, Doña Ana's grandfather.A cacicazgo was an entailed family Chart 1. Genealogy and inheritance of Doña Ana de Santa Barbara property, considered patrimonial land and inheritable only as a whole, as opposed to personal and acquired property.It not only contained land, but also rights over Indian services and labour.These duties were usually called tribute or terrazgo; Indians who lived on cacicazgo lands and owed terrazgo to a cacique in return for the use of the land were called terrazgueros.All members of a cacique family were called cacique or cacica.
In the changing relations of the sixteenth-century pueblos, these rights were often contested.In 1573, a case of Doña Ana de Santa Bárbara appeared before the audiencia, the viceregal court of law, in Mexico City, chaired by Viceroy Don Martín Enríquez.She asked the Viceroy to confirm her authority over 'certain estancias'(San Juan Quauhtempa, Santo Tomás, Santa Clara, Teteltitipan) and the Indians tied to them.She stated that the 'principal' who acted as headman of the estancias concerned was undermining her authority.Doña Ana declared that at the latest count and assessment of Tepexí, he 'had [been] ordered not to give her any terrazgo, which her terrazgueros used to give her and that she should be given from the tribute income of the pueblo what would be convenient for her sustenance' 2 (Hoekstra 1993, 216-224;Ouweneel 1996, 212).The Corregidor, or magistrate, of Tepexí de la Seda, Hernando de Vargas, carried out the investigation for the audiencia.Because many of the Indians concerned spoke Popoluca, there were two interpreters, one for Nahuatl and one for Popoluca.
As usual in these cases, the declarations of the investigation were both about the land itself and about the authority (or lordship) over the Indians living on them.The Spanish term for them was terrazgueros, but in the document terrazgueros, tributarios as well as macehuales, or commoners, are used interchangeably in the document.The witnesses, Indians from the settlements involved with first hand knowledge of local customs and practices, declared that the terrazgueros had given tribute to Doña Ana of mantles and spun wool, and personal services.They also sowed her land (sementeras) and helped her with other things in recognition (reconocimiento) of the lands that they held.According to another witness, there were 'more than two thousand tributarios' who provided her with 'mantles, personal services and hens (gallinas)' and that the 'macehuales used to unite each year' to cultivate a plot of land for her.They did so, the witness declared, because the land was hers and she was not paid anything.In addition they organized parties when she came to the estancias and gave her some firewood and they maintained her house with adobe when it was necessary.All this was 'in recognition of her lordship (señorío) and because this is their duty (cargo) and she is their cacica.'In contrast, the 'principal', of the estancia got nothing except for a small plot of land that these macehuales used to work (AGN-T-9-f 12r).
On 26 May 1575, the magistrate in commission of the court ruled in favour of Doña Ana and ordered that 'the Indians who live in the estancias [San Juan] Quauhtempa, Santo Tomás, Santa Clara, Teteltitipan' appeared to be 'of said Doña Bárbara'.They had to cultivate a plot of maize for her each year, keep (aderezar) her house and give her the other things they used to.But they did not have to give her meals and only had to work the plot of maize three times per year, one day each time.Moreover, they had to send her an Indian woman each week for personal service, all in their turn (por su rueda).With this decision, the issue was by no means finished.In 1597 Doña Ana asked the magistrate to force the Indians to give her terrazgo, work the sementeras and send two Indians for personal services each week.Her adversaries were again the local village headmen (tequitatos and mandones), and Doña Ana declared with some sense of drama that she was 'in great danger to have no one to serve her or work [her] milpas', or maize plots (AGN-T-9-f17v and 20v).
A more general instruction in the set of court orders is from 1596 when not only Doña Ana, but many caciques from Tepexí appeared before the commissionary judge, juez de comisión, Don Francisco Pacheco de Córdoba y Bocanegra, who was the local Spanish authority (alcalde mayor), of the Spanish province of Tepeaca, not far from Tepexí.In total twenty-five different caciques and principales appeared in two parties, one made up of Don Francisco Moctezuma (also spelled as Montecuzuma and Motecuhzuma in the documents) and his son, and the other of Doña Ana and twenty-two other persons.All those concerned declared that in the past they had had many disagreements and civil and criminal lawsuits in the audiencia and locally, which had given cause to many orders, inquiries and property assessments (possessiones) and other disturbances (ynquietudes).together they had spent forty thousand pesos de oro común causing 'much sorrow, unrest to their consciences, and losses to their houses' (cabilledas y mucha ynquietud de sus consciencias y perdida de sus casas) passing most of their time in the city of Mexico with their wives and children and with enormous costs in bringing judges and scribes and other officials.Therefore, Viceroy Conde de Monterrey sent a commissioner because 'as a Christian prince [he] wanted that there be peace and concord between them'.They all had to present proof in writing and drawing (memoria and pintura) as was customary in these cases, so that once and for all it would be clear what was theirs.On this occasion, all 25 of them were put in possession of a large number of lands, some big, some small and the terrazgueros living on them.In the case of Don Jusepe de Mendoza, gobernador, it was explicitly declared that his terrazgueros would remain in his possession, even if they went to another estancia (ANG-T-9-f22v and ff23r-32v).
There are no records about what happened to the cacicazgo of Doña Ana between the court orders of the 1590s and the partition of goods that started in 1621.At the end of her life, Doña Ana was an old woman whose children had died before her, and her estate had to be divided equally between her grandchildren, as she had declared in her will.There was a lawsuit to come to a fair and lawful division that lasted from 1621 to 1626.While the suit was pending, Don Diego de Mendoza, the eldest grandson, had custody of the estate together with Fray Juan Rizo, a Dominican friar and the Spaniard Nícolas Ramírez.Such custody was called albaceazgo, and Don Diego was the albaceo.Although he took care of the affairs of the estate and kept records of all financial transactions, we do not know what they looked like, as they have only survived in the form as they were included in the papers of the lawsuit -transcribed and probably translated from Nahuatl to Spanish by the court. 3 They are presented in the customary form of single-entry bookkeeping, based on 'cargo' and 'descargo'.Considering the details and the completeness of the transactions, it is likely that Don Diego did some of the bookkeeping himself.Who exactly carried out the financial dealings is not completely clear from the records, except for when Don Diego explicitly stated that he paid sums of money to specific people, both Spaniards and Indians.It is probable that Don Diego was directly responsible for the transactions.The cacicazgo was the estate of the whole Mendoza family, and all six grandchildren lived off it.In this respect, this Tepexí cacique family is comparable to the caciques from nearby Tlacotepec, who were studied by Perkins.According to him, cacicazgos were held by the whole family as a corporation (Perkins 2005).
In the time Don Diego de Mendoza, the eldest heir, administered the estate, he recorded every action he took for the estate from the payments to employees and servants, expenses for food and clothes for dependent Indian workers and the family, and other expenses of the family, to the breeding of livestock and transactions with traders.Taken together, the court records present a picture of the financial transactions and relational interactions of a cacique family as far as they were dependent on the cacicazgo and as far as their actions had financial consequences.The records provide information about the caciques and servants of the estate, its obligations and credit and the relationship of the various members of the cacique family to it.

The cacicazgo
There has been some confusion among historians and anthropologists about the way cacicazgos were inherited.Chance proposed a differentiation between dispersed and consolidated cacicazgos.The cacicazgo was modelled after the Spanish mayorazgo, an entailment of noble property for the eldest son that could not be parted or alienated (sold).It was devised to keep a noble estate intact and inheritable to the eldest son.Consolidated cacicazgos were legally entailed and inherited through a designated inheritor.A dispersed cacicazgo had many different inheritors in each generation.Elaborating on Chance's ideas, Perkins proposes the model of a corporate house based on his examination of Tlacotepec.Tecali with its dispersed model had been a pueblo de indios with an extraordinary amount of strife and discord from at least the middle of the sixteenth century onward and Ouweneel even cites the Tecali village priest who, in the eighteenth century from which most of the evidence for the two models comes, remarked that illegal land appropriation after a cacique died was a rule there.(Chance 1998, 729;Ouweneel 1996, 202-204, 214-215;Hoekstra 1993, 211-212;Taylor 1990;Perkins 2005) Although the cacicazgo at stake here in the partition of Doña Ana's goods in Tepexí has traits from both models, in fact it follows Spanish law on the matter.The testament of Doña Ana (originally in Nahuatl but translated for the audiencia in Mexico City) stipulated all the peculiarities and how the heritable goods should be divided.The Spanish judge followed this will entirely.The situation is more complicated because Doña Ana, apart from her grandchildren who were to inherit from her, had outlived her entire family.Her parents, Don Martín de la Cruz and Doña Isabel de Guzman, and her husband, Don Toribio de Esquivel, had all been caciques of the pueblo of Tepexí.Her daughter, Doña María de Esquivel, had been married to Don Diego de Mendoza, also a cacique from Tepexí.They were all dead by 1620, so that the children of Doña María (Doña Ana's grandchildren) were under her custody until they married.As a portion of the goods, called hacienda in the document, of Doña Ana's daughter and son-in-law Doña María and Don Diego de Sainos de Mendoza were not part of a legal cacicazgo, each of the (grand)children got their legal share (legítima porción) (AGN-T-87-ff 18r-38v).
Doña Ana also had goods of her own 'that had been left to her by her parents', and thus were not part of the legal cacicazgo.She held official (land) titles to all of them.These lands were also divided equally between her grandchildren, except for one tract of land called Hochiapan Ocotitlanepan that was to be added and subject (sometido) to the cacicazgo.Among these goods there were the other pueblos of Acatzingo, Santa Catalina Tlatempan and San Agustin Tetitlan.These could not be sold, but were to be divided among her grandchildren (AGN-T-87-ff39-41r and f 38r).
Finally, the legal cacicazgo was treated separately in the will.It contained five 'pueblos and lands and terrazgueros': San Antonio Huexoxoapan, Santa María Nativitas Quauhtempen, Santo Tomás de Auino Atlihuetzia, Santa Catalina Tehuiztla and San Lucas Teteltzintle (the pueblos here should be understood as vil-lages and not as pueblos de indios).She declared that she held an official title (merced) from former viceroy bishop Don Pedro Moya de Contreras and was aware that the cacicazgo should never be 'divided so that for always the lordship (señorío) will be known and understood and because her parents and ancestors were noble lords (señores principales) and caciques of [the] pueblo and so that the lineage would not be lost […] now in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost the […] cacicazgo, tierras, terrazgueros [were] bequeathed to her grandson Don Diego de Mendoza' If he would die without children, his brother Don Domingo was to take over the cacicago (entre en el dicho cacicazgo) and after him, his other brothers and sisters (AGN-T-87-ff41v-42v).
It is interesting to note that Doña Ana presented the cacicazgo 'pueblos' (San Antonio Huexoxoapan, Santa María Nativitas Quauhtempen, Santo Tomás de Auino Atlihuetzia, Santa Catalina Tehuiztla and San Lucas Teteltzintle) in the testament as a whole.The terrazgueros were presented as economically united with the lands of the cacicazgo they occupied, which makes it clear that they represented a social and economic value that was recognized by both the Indian caciques and the Spanish authorities.From the sixteenth-century information about the cacicazgo, it has already become clear that the possession of terrazgueros was a part of the heritage of the caciques and part of their señorío or patrimonio, as it was called in the documents.This is consistent with what is known about caciques in other areas of the central Mexican highlands, where most caciques still had dependent Indians, and in many parts the majority of the peasants in an Indian settlement still had the status of terrazguero.
The accounts in the lawsuit papers of the Mendoza family present the bookkeeping records of a cacique family household for a period of five years, or at least the part that was expressed in terms of money, even if the money did not necessarily change hands physically.The accounts kept track of: […] the ganado mayor and menor of cows, bulls, stallions, mares, mules, donkeys, goats, kids, sheep and lambs that I, Don Diego de Mendoza, with consentment from […] my brothers, have sold from the haciendas that we hold in this jurisdiction, and that Don Diego Sainos [de Mendoza] and Doña María de Esquivel, our parents, and Doña Ana de Santa Bárbara, our grandmother, have left us.We sold this livestock to pay the debts that they had [when she died] and the funeral of our grandmother and to sustain us and to pay for our illnesses […] And [it is] also a note of the livestock that died and those we gave to the indios de servicio and other people from the year sixteen hundred and twenty when our grandmother died (AGN-T-87-f87v-88r).
The cacicazgo was a noble household that comprised more than a single stem family.All who were entitled to call themselves cacique were part of it, and everyone who was a cacique of the family lived off the revenues from the family holdings.In addition to the members of the family, there were other people who belonged to the household, including servants and dependants.Four members of the cacique family in total depended on the cacicazgo, not counting the servants who worked for them.
The possessions of the cacicazgo consisted of real estate and movable goods, but the movable goods were not the most important part.They consisted mainly of agricultural equipment, a cart, plows, saddles, yokes and leashes, axes and other iron tools expensive enough to mention.Furthermore, Doña Ana had a number of boxes containing her jewels of some fifty jade stones (chalchihuites) and coral necklaces, one of which had a silver cross and a small golden image of Our Lady.There were some small boxes (cajitas de flandes) with 'women's toys of very little value', and some pieces of silk cloth.The inventory also mentions a large wooden cupboard (almario); six chairs, some of them old and broken; a small, white, wooden writing table; and some empty wooden boxes, some with or without locks and keys, and two lined with coloured cotton cloth.There were also two oil paintings (lienzos), one depicting the Ascension of Our Lord with a gilded frame, and the other of Saint Joseph and Our Lady with a white frame.The real estate comprised living quarters and estates.The will states that, from the time her parents had died, Doña Ana had always maintained her lands well and had also bought five tracts of land for livestock (sitios de estancia) in different parts of Tepexí.Two had been bought from Don Andres de Bonilla, cacique from Tehuacan, and three from Joan and Alonso de Carrion, Spaniards from Tzizacayoapan. 4  The lands as they were summed up in the testament appeared later in the inventory and pricing (apreciado) by the judge of the lawsuit.There were forty-three large and small pieces of land in total with a combined value of more than 11,000 pesos, which was regarded as a considerable fortune in itself.As said above, terrazgueros were not included in the value of the land.Even if it is not possible to plot the pieces of land on a map, it is clear that they were scattered over a large part of Tepexí's territory.This is not surprising, as land often changed hands.In all the testaments I have come across from both Indian caciques and Spanish landowners, plots and even whole farms were bought and sold, or given away as wedding gifts or for other reasons.
The lands were spread out and varied in size and quality.Doña Ana had eleven irrigated tracts of land (tierras de riego), six non-irrigated (tierras de temporal) and one unspecified.She had three gardens, one of pomegranate trees, one of nopal (prickly pear) cactus trees (to obtain cochineal dye from the red cochineal insect living in the cacti) and one with pitahaya (dragonfruit) cactus trees.Moreover, as appeared above, there were four estancias, three estancia de ganado menor, for goats and sheep, one estancia de ganado mayor, for cattle, donkeys, mules and horses and one labor (farm) where maize was cultivated..The terms ganado mayor and ganado menor referred to size, but this did not mean that large animals could not be held on an estancia de ganado menor.On one estancia the cacicazgo had a license, (merced) for a sugar mill (trapiche), but apparently it had not yet been built.However, such a merced held value in itself and the value of the land was increased by it.The estancias were the largest and most expensive pieces of the inheritance.The sizes of the agricultural lands were recorded in standard sizes, solar, suerte and caballerías.Solares were 'house plots' and probably dispersed inside the villages and hamlets.Because precise measures were not given in many cases, it is impossible to calculate exactly how much land the cacicazgo comprised in total.The estancias alone accounted for some 43 km 2 , but size alone did not determine the value of land.For example, milpa soil was much more fertile, more central and so more valuable than pastures.
The Mendoza family had several houses in Tepexí.The first one was opposite the main door of the church in the middle of the pueblo, and was valued at 400 pesos, but it is impossible to judge whether this was expensive or not.All the family members lived here, so it must have been large.Doña Ana had another house in the cabecera, across from the 'false door' of the Dominican monastery.It is not clear who lived in it.The last house was also in the cabecera near the south corner of the church, but it was small and made of mud.Obviously, there must have been houses on the estancias as well, because people lived and worked there, and sometimes her grandson Don Diego went to visit them, but they were not mentioned separately.On one of the suertes of land Doña Ana had received from Don Francisco de Moctezuma, there were some solares, where some terrazgueros still lived.
It was explicitly stated that these remained Don Francisco's, as had been stipulated in the 1596 lawsuits cited above.Not all family members worked in estate management.In practice, only Don Diego de Mendoza and his brother appear in the accounts as the representatives who bought and sold livestock, food and other products.Estate management was not a full time task.We do not have direct information about it, but according to the records, Don Diego de Mendoza was also gobernador of the pueblo of Tepexí for at least part of the time he reported about estate management.The records have limited information about the Doña Ana's other grandchildren.Don Domingo de Mendoza died in 1625 and left a widow and two children, Don Nicolas and Doña Francisca, who were still children.Doña María de Mendoza had married Don Antonio de los Angeles, cacique of Tepeaca.Doña María had a small child, Francisca, for whom she hired a wet nurse in 1622, an 'india Chichigua'.Further, the accounts contain nothing more of the personal circumstances of the members of the family.The subject of their personal expenses will be treated below.

Estate management
The management of the estate was not in the hands of a single man or woman.For this, there were various reasons.The caciques were head of a household or 'house' (casa in Spanish).A house was a family and all the actions required to sustain it.A woman like Doña Ana was not supposed to occupy herself directly with things such as agriculture.Don Diego de Mendoza, her grandson and administrator of the properties she left was gobernador of Tepexí de la Seda for most, if not all, of the period of his cacicazgo administration (1621-1626).Moreover, the estate consisted of different parts that were spread out over much of the pueblo's territory.There were separate estancias of cattle, sheep and mules.The possession of mules suggests a role in transportation as mule trains were the most important means of bulk transport.There was also a muleteer called Juan Templador in the service of the haciendas.What the mule train transported is not clear from the accounts, but it is clear that Don Diego sent around all sorts of goods to his estancias and to places around Tepexí as well as to cities such as Cholula and Puebla.Each of the various estancias was managed by a resident administrator, called mayordomo.In general, Don Diego himself or his mayordomos oversaw estancia management.At least he saw that as his responsibility as is clear from two occasions on which things went wrong.In 1623, Don Diego declared that on the estancia Tetitlan in the village Zacapalahe he had sown wheat and maize, but did not harvest anything because the irrigation dams of the lands had broken down while he was ill in bed and there was no one to watch over affairs and the land.In 1624, Don Diego declared that ninetynine of the sheep of the estancia San Antonio that were guarded by the Indian shepherd Francisco were lost because they 'could not be found'.Forty more were lost because Francisco fled and never showed up again.He left his herd alone on the fields where they could only be rounded up with difficulty.Loss of livestock on such a large scale was rare and caused by exceptional circumstances, but it was normal that some animals wandered off or died of age, diseases (enfermedades) or plagues, such as worms (guzaneras) or just because they were needed for family consumption (AGN-T-87-f103v-169r).
The livestock farms had a large number of animals that were assessed at the beginning of the lawsuit.In the years of the albaceazgo their number increased by breeding (multiplico).In total over the whole period of accounting on the various estancias there were 932 cows, 8480 goats, 698 horses, 144 mules, 53 donkeys (mainly for breeding mules) and 819 sheep.Don Diego and his brother Don Domingo also sold some of this livestock.In the five years of the albaceazgo livestock sales amounted to a total of 5,055 pesos.They did not buy many animals.An exception was in 1623 when they bought eight domestic calves (novillos manzos) that were 'very necessary for working the land of the estancias because there are not enough cows'.In that same year they bought a donkey from a Francisco Guzman for the estancia Coxcatlan for breeding with the female donkeys from the estancia Santo Tomas (AGN-T-87-ff86r-87v and f134r, f137r).
In addition to the livestock, the estancias of the cacicazgo also produced maize and some beans (frijol) on the labor of San Luis, the hacienda San Antonio and the milpa of Tetitlan.Usually they produced between 600 and 700 fanegas (33,500-39,000 litres), which were all eaten by the family and their servants on the estancias, but in the case of drought the harvest was less.The sheep on San Antonio produced between 350 and 450 fleeces per year, from which ten per cent was subtracted for the sheep shearers (tresquiladores) and another ten per cent for tithes.Fleeces were only sold only in 1625 and 1626 when Don Diego bought them up; in the other years they were put to a special use.In 1622 mattresses were made from them for the members of the family, in 1623 they were used to put the equipment of the mule train in order, and in 1624 the Indians who repaired the jacales (water reservoirs) and made corrales were paid for their services with the wool (ANG-T-87-f166r-170v).
Labour organization on the livestock farms was related to these activities.Sheep estancias had shepherds (pastores).Cattle estancias had cowboys (vaqueros).Both shepherds and vaqueros were led by captains (capitanes).In total there were 53 'salaried Indians' (indios de salario) when Don Diego took over affairs in 1621: 11 vaqueros, 28 shepherds, 5 horsekeepers (yeguerizos) and 9 field workers (gañanes), including 5 captains.They earned between 2 and 4 pesos and maize rations, while the capitanes earned 3 to 4 pesos.The livestock farms needed attention all year round and mostly had a permanent labour force, except for the gang of sheep shearers who visited San Antonio once a year and were paid per sheared sheep.On the maize fields in San Antonio, Tetitlan and San Luis, there was a permanent labour force.Agriculture had much seasonal work done by work gangs such as the Indians from San Antonio that were hired with their teams of oxen to plough the land.Such work gangs were led by an Indian tequitato who hired seasonal workers from a village near the estancia.A few times each year, entries appear in the accounts where a tequitato was paid 6 or 7 pesos to hire such tlaquehuales.It is not clear whether the Tepexí's terrazgueros were among them, but in securing a seasonal labour force it must have helped that Don Diego was an important man in the pueblo.
The vaqueros, the gañanes, tlaquehuales and the shepherds were Indians, mostly from Tepexí itself but also from pueblos like Tepeaca and Tecamachalco.In some cases, the accounts state that workers were family of the captains.In a few cases women also appear in the accounts as shepherdesses or cooks for the gañanes, such as Agustina from Tecamachalco (india molendera) who worked at the estancia Quauhtempan and, uncharacteristically, asked for money at least once a year.The capitanes were also Indians, but some of the mayordomos, such as Luis Rodrígues, Luis Ruíz, Juan de Lenguas and Domingo Hernández were Spaniards 141v,147r).
To some, it will come as a surprise that Spaniards were servants of Indians, instead of the other way round.This is contrary to the idea of labour relationships as it is usually described in literature.In that view, Spaniards were the masters and Indians invariably held subordinate positions -as servants but more often as dependents or near-slaves.Here, it is not so much the normal picture turned upside down, but rather testimony to the important position of the cacique family in Tepexí.The mayordomos were the servants of highest rank on an estancia.They dealt with the outside world in daily estancia business.Estancias were part of a predominantly Spanish sector of the rural economy, as common Indians only worked their milpas and held no livestock or only a few sheep or a pig.Selling livestock was not left to the mayordomo in this case.Instead Don Diego and his brother Don Domingo usually took care of this, thus taking part in this Spanish economic sector.
The servants were paid for their services, either in money or in goods or livestock.Normally, the money was not paid out on a regular basis but was kept in an account of debts and credits.Daily food was part of the contract with the farm hands and apart from being the most practical solution, it was also an expression of the idea that they formed part of the house(hold) of the cacique.The highest ranks of the servants, the captains and the mayordomos received part of their wages in the form of livestock, which was usually a stallion or a bull that they received in November 'in their account'.The mayordomo de las cabras Domingo Hernandez in 1626 asked for his money and got 76 pesos 4 reales, which was the sum of the amount he had earned.On 21 February of the following year he received 21 pesos for the work he was still going to do.At the same time Francisco García, Indian and headman of another estancia, received 32 pesos 'conform his current account' (AGN-T-87-f146v-147r).
All servants were dressed by their master, who bought clothes or coarse woollen cloth, usually sayal, once or twice a year from a travelling merchant.Servants were paid in money only when they asked for it, for instance when they had debts or had ended up in jail and had to be bought free, such as Francisco Jacinto, servant of the house who was in prison in 1623 for unknown reasons.Others, like the gañanes Juan de Baldrin and Miguel Xinhiga, got 3 pesos when they got married.
The balance of the debts and credits of the servants was not always positive.For example, in 1621 a herder came to work on the estancia of San Antonio from the service of Juan de Licuna, a Spaniard from Tepeaca.His 10 peso debt was taken over by Don Diego and paid to the Spaniard.All Indians had to pay tribute to their village tequitato.Therefore, Don Diego paid tequitatos from different villages a sum of tribute money three times per year.As said above, the accounts of the cacicazgo show only the relations in which there was an exchange of money, regardless of whether it actually changed hands.Apart from the estancias, it has already become clear above that the caciques also had temporary servants in their houses from Tepexí, who were their own terrazgueros.In the 1620s, terrazgueros were still obliged to serve in the cacique house each in turn, usually one week every three months.The men usually did agricultural work or other hand labour and the women prepared tortillas and other food and they maintained their houses.

Cacique life and relations
The accounts of the cacicazgo also give us a look at the cacique relations with the outside world.This can never be a full picture, as it only shows the actions that had a financial impact on the estate.This leaves out most of the transactions within Tepexí.Even very small amounts of money were recorded, but within Indian pueblos money did not change hands often, and barter was more common.Moreover, in the case of cacique-macehual relations there were many jobs and tasks that fell under the terrazgo obligations.The amounts that the various members of the family received for their personal expenses were always recorded, as long as they were considerable sums.Other expenses accounted for are gifts or costs that were made on behalf of the household as a whole, such as payments to gañanes or taxes in the form of tithes that were levied on all 'Spanish' agricultural products such as livestock, and gifts to authorities.The accounts go on for thirty folios (sixty written sides), and breathe an atmosphere of business as usual with all the daily occurrences that happened in the cacicazgo, thus illustrating what occupied the family over the course of the five years of the accounts.
Only a little money was spent each year in the sustenance of the family and its 'house' in the sense of all servants and workers that worked for the family.In general, the household was mostly self-sustaining.Its members ate meat from the livestock from the estancias and maize from the labores.Don Diego also sent food such as meat and maize to the livestock estancias for the servants who worked there.Don Diego sometimes bought a little maize, but in 1622 there had been such a drought that the harvest from the labor San Luis and the milpa of Tetitlan fell short of household needs, and some of the maize was spoiled (pachacate).Don Diego had to buy maize at the market for very high prices through Indian and Spanish middlemen at markets in Puebla, Tepeaca and Mocajac.In that year he also had to buy fodder (zacate and something called yzter in the accounts) for the cattle and goats on the market, which he normally did not.But the farms did not produce everything.Each year, there were some varying entries for foodstuffs and commodities.These normally included lard (manteca), eggs, pepitas, cocoa, sugar, candles, chillies, tomatoes and salt and a few pounds of fish in April, presumably for Lent.Don Diego also bought clothes or a piece of sayal for his gañanes and their wives, usually in November or December.These were huipiles and nahuas, the usual clothing for Indian women (AGN-T-87-f 118v-119v and the 'gasto' accounts to f 147v).
The personal expenses of all brothers and sisters were also kept in the accounts and subtracted from their part of the inheritance (see Table 1 for an overview).The family members spent some money on their personal servants and in dressing them.Shoes and clothes for themselves were usually delivered to them or bought for them, even in such far away places like Tehuacan or Puebla where at times they even commissioned a Spanish tailor to make a suit.Usually the cloth or suits only cost one or two pesos.There were exceptions, such as the yellow coloured damask skirts for Doña Escolástica, and a jacket of the same cloth for Don Toribio, both costing nine pesos, and the blue suit with silk and silver buttons of Don Toribio, which cost 42 pesos.Usually, caciques did not dress in sayal, but in ruan (printed cotton), and on special occasions in silk and coloured damask.Source: Archivo General de la Nación, México -Ramo de Tierras -Volumen 87 -Expediente 1.
In addition, mules were bought for the Indians from the pueblo.Sums of money were borrowed from each other (and paid back), or from the corregidor and other Spaniards and Indians from Tepexí or from the community.They also borrowed money from people when they were away from home, such as Doña Escolástica who borrowed 12 pesos when she was ill in Puebla, and Don Toribio who borrowed 2 pesos from Diego de Guzman, principal from Jolutla, and Don Juan de Velasco, gobernador from Tamazulapa, when he travelled to the Mixteca with the Spaniard Gregorio de Carrion.The largest debt was the 700 pesos mentioned in the testament of Doña Ana.It was the remainder of the sum that Doña Ana and Don Diego had paid to the brothers Juan and Alonso de Carrion from Cilacoyoapan in the Mixteca for land, three sitios de estancia de ganado menor.Don Diego de Mendoza himself was the only one who did not spend anything from his part of the inheritance.He stated that he did not need anything for his personal use because during the time of the administration of the goods he had been gobernador of the pueblo, and thus had access to information and other ways to get money (muchas inteligencias y maneras de buscar dinero).He also had income from petates (mats) and other items from his cacicazgo to sustained his person. 5 The most substantial sums of money were spent on the important occasions of life like weddings and funerals.In this the cacique family from Tepexí was not much different from other elite families anywhere.Being a cacique also contained an element of keeping up appearances in addition to properly fulfilling the duties of daily life and church.The largest financial post was the funeral and mourning period (novenario) of Doña Ana.There were expenses for the friars, the church singers (7 pesos), the clothes for all the brothers and sisters of the Mendoza family (36 pesos), and some mourning silk (1 peso).During the funeral, as well as preceding and following it, masses were sung for which candles, bread and wine were needed.The occasion cost a total of 396 pesos and 6 reales, excluding the 5 pesos salary for an official from the bishop who came to check whether the ecclesiastical duties of the testament had been carried out in 1623.The family bought candles in Puebla each year for the celebration of the 'Day of the Dead' (Día de los difuntos).In 1626, Don Diego paid 20 pesos for the retablo of the church, 'to fulfil the 50 pesos our grandmother Doña Ana de Santa Bárbara had ordered to give as alimonies (limosna) for that purpose' (AGN-T-87-f137r).On 6 May 1626, Don Domingo de Mendoza, Don Diego's brother, died.His funeral, the mourning period and the masses that were performed were less expensive.From his portion of the inheritance, Don Diego paid 262 pesos and gave a stallion and a young mare to the church singers.
Money was also spent on other big occasions.When the Mendoza family invited the caciques from Tecamachalco, Acatzingo, Tecali 'and from elsewhere' to celebrate the feast of Santo Domingo on 16 September 1623, there was an entry for 35 pesos 6 reales for buying goods on the market such as cocoa, sugar, achiote and spices from Castile as well as a table cloth, good wine, plates and bowls.A day later they bought another 15 pesos' worth of chicken for the feast.Another big occasion was the marriage of Doña María de Mendoza to Don Martín de los Ángeles, cacique from Tepeaca on 12 July 1623.The bride spent 94 pesos 2 reales on cloth, silk buttons and a collar for the bridegroom and her bridesmaids, and 70 pesos on a dagger.89 pesos 4 reales for wine and sweets (colación) were spent on the wedding itself.After the wedding she left for Tepeaca, but relationships were kept warm.Apart from subtracting money for more clothes for herself and her new husband and for, among other things, a mattress and pillows of red silk (seda de grana), she came to the feast of Santo Domingo, where she spent 40 pesos on her dress.
Keeping up relationship with others, especially the Spanish authorities in Tepexí, also cost money, although these were not counted as personal expenses.Don Diego and his brother Don Domingo with some regularity gave or sold a mule or a horse to the corregidor and gave mules to the Dominican friars as alimonies (limosna).Once, two stallions were given to Francisco Millan from Tepeaca 'because had had lost a mule on San Antonio' (AGN_T-87-f97v).
It is remarkable how much money was spent on doctors.In 1625 Don Toribio de Mendoza, one of the brothers, was in Mexico City and fell ill.On this occasion Don Diego sent hem 20 pesos in total for his care, which was counted as personal expenses.But a cacique that was ill was not treated by one of the 'ordinary' village healers that lived in the pueblos.A cacique with a serious injury or illness sent for a proper Spanish doctor (cirujano).Such was the case with Don Domingo de Mendoza when he was injured on 22 March 1623 after a mule (macho cerrero) dragged him along for some distance.He sent for Miguel Rendón, cirujano from Tepeaca and paid him 45 pesos 1 real.After Don Domingo died, the same Miguel Rendón came again to cure his widow Doña María Moctezuma and her son Don Nicolás for 31 pesos; in 1622 he also treated an ulcer of Doña María de Mendoza for 9 pesos.Not all caciques of the family had the same doctor.When she fell ill in 1626, Doña Escolastica de Mendoza first sent for Pedro de Ayala, cirujano from Acatzingo (close to Tepeaca) who charged 20 pesos.Apparently, she did not get better and, accompanied by Juana, a chocolate maker who was probably a trusted servant, she was transported to Puebla for treatment by another Spanish doctor.A cirujano was expensive in itself, but in addition chickens and money were sent through middlemen for her cure.The total sum for her cure in Puebla was 63 pesos 6 reales, excluding the 4 pesos for the Indian carriers who carried her to Puebla.

Being a colonial cacique
The cacicazgo of the Mendoza family of Tepexí in the 1620s had a firm position in the pueblo de indios with roots in both the Indian and Spanish social and economic sectors.The basis of the cacicazgo was the cacicazgo lands and rights, but being a cacique was much more than just being a (large) landowner.The cacicazgo as a legal entity was essentially a protection by law of the cacique lordship inherited from his prehispanic ancestors.A legally entailed cacicazgo could not be divided and belonged to the lineage.This meant that there was only one heir of the estate, the eldest son.However, other family members should also be provided for, but there is too little research to be able to say anything specific on this matter.From the partition of goods of Doña Ana de Santa Bárbara, it is clear that one solution lay in the additional private lands of the cacique, with or without terrazgueros.Law did not prevent these goods from division and so these could provide noncacicazgo inheritors with a means of a living or a dowry.Another solution lay in marrying off the dependent children.In this case Doña María de Mendoza, one of the younger daughters, had been married to a cacique from Tepeaca.Intermarriage was common practice between cacique families.Its effect on cacicazgos and power distribution deserves much more study.Like European nobility, the cacicazgo family spoke of itself as a lineage (linaje) or a house (casa).This was an ideal more than a reality.For early modern European nobility Asch characterizes the significance of the idea of the house as a 'symbolic community of the living, the dead and the future members of a family.If this was fiction in a certain sense, this fiction thoroughly characterized the mentality of the nobility' (Asch 2001, 22).
The Indian part of the cacicazgo had developed from the traditional Indian lordship where the cacique's land rights were complemented by his lordship over his terrazgueros or macehuales.The terrazgueros held a plot of land of their own and gave their cacique tribute and labour services in return.The terrazgueros were not bound to their land alone, but the cacique-terrazguero bond was also personal.It was not permitted to alienate cacicazgo land.It would be interesting to investigate what implications these lordship relations had for marriages between macehuales of different caciques, a subject that has never been studied to my knowledge (Chance 1996, Olivera 1978).
The workers on the Spanish-style farms had a different position from the terrazgueros on the estancias in that they did not have a plot of land of their own to work.Therefore, the lordship relation between cacique and terrazguero could not extend in the same way to the farms, but was based on salaried contracts.Still, some sort of lordship relation was carried over, because the workers not only got a salary, but their master also made sure that they got food and clothes, and if they went to prison, he paid for their freedom.In this relation money changed hands rarely, because this was not a monetary society, but accounts of debts and credit were kept.This did not mean that food and clothes were free, because they were either part of the contract or subtracted from the accounts.The accounts of a worker were just part of the deal.This was the same on Spanish farms and estates and on cacicazgos.In Tepexí, workers moved from Spanish enterprises to the cacicazgo, taking their debts and credit with them.The transfer would be concluded with payment of the debts with the Spanish estate -or the other way round it where it worked in the same way.
The Mendoza cacicazgo of the 1620s was at the cross-roads of society in Tepexí de la Seda.The Indian side operated mainly as a traditional style lordship in an Indian context and the Spanish side operated more like a Spanish business in a Spanish setting.Some of the lands of the cacicazgo had been bought from Spaniards, the caciques paid Spanish taxes and most buying and selling was done with Spaniards, although Indians always played a significant part.In many ways, this made the cacicazgo and the cacique pivotal in Tepexí.His position as a cacique made Don Diego de Mendoza electable as a gobernador, a position he occupied for most of the period concerned.Cacicazgo rivalry over lordship and claims to land and terrazgueros had led to a large-scale clash between Tepexí caciques and village headmen in the sixteenth century.In the seventeenth century, this had ended and the relations with the other caciques were more cordial.The activities of the Mendoza caciques were not confined to Tepexí alone.Don Diego declared that he had been in Cholula for a long time in order to deliver the royal tribute, because he was gobernador. 6His brothers and sisters travelled to the City of Mexico, to Puebla and to various places in the Mixteca on different occasions, and his sister María got married in Tepeaca.The family had their clothes made in Tehuacan and Puebla.Don Diego and his brother Don Domingo regularly sent their servant (criado) Gonzalo Perez for business or made use of both Indians and Spaniards who were travelling anyway to buy maize in places like Tepeaca (the royal scribe acted as his agent there) and Coxcatlan in times of drought.Don Diego signed papers, made contracts and appeared before court, just like his grandmother had done and his brothers did.At the same time, he sent food and clothes to his farms and held as much personal supervision over them as he could, and he complained that things went wrong when he was not there.
The Mendoza caciques were aware of their status.They bought better clothes than common Indians and from faraway places.They drank chocolate, the traditional drink for Indian nobles, and wine (imported from Spain) on special occasions.They ate quite a lot of meat and chicken, whereas common Indians usually just had maize tortillas, beans and some chillies or tomatoes.They kept up a relationship with the Spanish corregidor of Tepexí, with other caciques from and outside the pueblo de indio, and with other, mainly local, Spaniards.They gave presents, invariably called alimonies, to the Dominican friars in the form of mules, but they also gave to the church on other occasions, such as money for the new altar piece for the village church and its singers.They spent a great deal of money on their health (and illnesses) and provided for the care of their souls after death.Fulfilling a duty or displaying one's status were important elements, but it is not possible to indicate which might be the most important.
The social and economic position in the centre of pueblo life made the Mendoza cacicazgo an institution around which revolved many parts of village life, economic, social and cultural.Its caciques were local lords and businessmen who distinguished themselves by their clothes and their way of living.They kept relations with every important person, party or group in the pueblo, Spaniards and Indians, from corregidor to macehual to Spanish estate owners, travelling merchants and friars and beyond the pueblo with faraway authorities such as the audiencia in the City of Mexico and the bishop in Tlaxcala.These relations could not be taken for granted but were subject to change and negotiation, often uninteresting, matter of fact and business as usual, because this was daily life and as such not ruled by big events.The enormous sixteenth-century troubles that had made Doña Ana sigh that she would end up with no one to serve her or pay her tribute, and that made all the caciques of Tepexí declare that they had spent forty thousand pesos which had caused them much sorrow, illustrate that this web of negotiated relations was vulnerable and ultimately depended on trust and stability.In the sixteenth century, the traditional foundation of the cacicazgo lordship was no longer able to provide stability because of the enormous changes that had been wrought in society since the Spanish Invasion.The transition to more investments and activities in the Spanish sector of society at the beginning of the seventeenth century broadened the socioeconomic base of the cacicazgo and changed it into a pivotal colonial institution.* * * Rik Hoekstra is head of electronic source publications at the Institute of Netherlands History in The Hague.He has been studying colonial Mexico for many years.Besides an ongoing interest in colonial Spanish America, he has broadened his scope to the operation of the Spanish Empire under the Habsburgs.Publications include: Two Worlds Merging.The Transformation of Society in the Valley of Puebla, 1570-1640(CEDLA, Amsterdam, 1993); and with Arij Ouweneel, Las tierras de los pueblos de indios en el altiplano de México, 1560-1920.Una aportación teórica interpretativa, Cuadernos del CEDLA 1 (Amsterdam, 1998).<rik.hoekstra@gmail.com>as AGN-T-9 with folio number.3. The records of the lawsuit for the partition of goods are in the Archivo General de la Nación, México -Tierras -Vol.87 -expediente 3 entitled Tepeji de la Seda -Cacicazgo de Ana de Santa Bárbara e inventario de sus bienes, con los de su yerno Don Diego de Mendoza.It contains 223 folios with two written sides (originially 224, but one 'is missing').To be cited as AGN-T-87 with folionumber.4. 'Y assimismo manda que no se puedan bender los dhos pueblos ni los yndios,' AGN-T-87-ff42r-43v. 5. 'Don Diego dixo que este declarante no tomo cossa ninguna de la dha cantidad de pesos de oro de los cinco mill cinquenta y cinco y dos tomines que bendio de ganado mayores y menores durante el tiempo de su administracion hasta ahora para ninguna cossa necessaria a su persona y sustento porque a el tiempo y antes que entrara en ella avia sido y era gobernador deste pueblo y tenia muchas yntelegencias y modos de buscar dineros y grangeria de petates y otras de su cacicazgo con lo qual se a vestido y sustentado su persona' AGN-T-87-ff 185v-186r; cases of debt from diffent parts in the document; item about the 700 peso debt in the testament at ff 115v-116r.6. '[…] ausencia que hize deste pueblo a la ciudad de Cholula a hazer quentas y dar las de los reales tributos que eran a mi cargo por ser como era en dho tiempo governador' AGN-T-87-f 61r.

Map 1 .
Location of Tepexí de la Seda in Colonial Mexico.

Table 1 .
Total personal expenses per person (in pesos)