Spanish North America

Spanish North America
Neda Bezerra

David J. Weber. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. xx + 579 pp.

John Francis Bannon. The Spanish Borderlands Frontier. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1979. x + 308 pp.

John L. Kessel. Spain in the Southwest: A Narrative History of Colonial New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002. xvii + 462 pp.

Oakah L. Jones, Jr. Los Paisanos: Spanish Settlers on the Northern Frontier of New Spain. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1979. xv + 351 pp.

In 1469, when Queen Isabella of Castile married Prince Ferdinand of Aragón, their kingdoms joined and the foundation of what would become Spain was then laid. A few years later, in 1493, with the stroke of his pen, Spanish Pope Alexander VI divided the non-Christian world into two zones between Spain and Portugal. That papal bull gave almost the entire area of what would be called the New World to Spain, giving Ferdinand and Isabella an opportunity to launch a crusade to spread Spanish culture and Catholicism to the far corners of the globe believing that God was their ally. With this belief in mind, Spanish conquitadores set out to the Americas to establish Spanish defensive outposts and to convert the indigenous population. As early as 1513, Spaniard Ponce de León led the first European expedition to North America, landing in an area that he named Florida. To serve God, their country and themselves, for next three hundred years, Spanish explorers and Catholic missionaries tried to transform the natives of North America into tax-paying Christians and control their world. Unknown to them, one of their most important weapons was the diseases they brought with them, which would wipe out at least one third of the native population that would come into contact with them.

Franciscan priests and friars embarked in this crusade and came to North America to minister to the indigenous people. Wearing no shields and carrying no weapons, the Franciscans accompanied expeditions hoping to save souls and reshape native culture. They lived among the natives and monopolized the missions from Florida to California. The Spanish Crown believed that these Catholic missionaries helped in its campaign to conquer this new and vast territory because they were able to pacify the Indigenous population in a much more effective way than the Spanish soldiers. Unfortunately, obedience to these men of God did not stop the pandemics and the native people continued to die. Later, their failure to intercede with God to help the natives overcome diseases, starvation and death as well as the missionary’s harsh treatment of the native population would lead to their failure.

Also, starting in the late seventeenth century, Spanish frontier settlements in North America started to feel the pressure of its imperial competitors – first France, England, and Russia, and later, after 1783, the United States. Slowly, with a declining metropolitan economy, outdated economic policies, and insistence on Christianizing the natives, Spain lost ground to their rivals, who saw North America not as an outpost, but as a commercial enterprise. By 1820, Spain had lost Florida to the United States, and a year later, it would lose the Northern provinces, from California to Texas, to the new independent nation of Mexico.
Three hundred years of Spanish enterprise in North America’s frontier left an enduring legacy. The Spanish Crown had planted their brand of Western civilization in the Northern rim of New Spain, in what would become the United States. Spanish frontiersmen also left their mark in the indigenous communities. By the end of the colonial era, Pueblo Indians, for instance, despite not completely losing their own language, religion, and cultural identity, had adopted, nonetheless, new crops and animals brought to their region by the Spaniards. They also adopted some aspects of Spanish culture that they had found useful. The horse, for instance, brought much transformation to the indigenous groups, enabling them not only to hunt more easily as well to be more independent from the Spaniards and other Europeans.

These four books currently under revision show how Spain was able to establish a transcontinental frontier’s settlement in North America. David J. Weber’s The Spanish Frontier in North America provides a complete and fresh overview of three centuries of Spanish occupation in what would become the United States. Weber gives us a clear narrative, heavily footnoted, and based on primary and secondary sources. He writes in the introduction that “across the southern rim of the United States, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, aged buildings stand as mute reminders of an earlier Hispanic America that has vanished” (p. 1). Weber argues that less evident than the Spanish architectural style, are the cultural transformations that came with Spanish conquest and settlement to North America (p.3). He asserts that the arrival of the Europeans with “their zoological and biological imports changed the natural world beyond recognition” (p. 10). In this book, Weber seeks “to recreate the past with its own integrity and within its own terms of reference” (p. 9). In doing so, he contends that his narrative “must come to terms with the Indians, whose societies and cultures Spaniards transformed and who, in turn, transformed the frontier societies and cultures of the Spaniards” (p. 13). In 490 pages of narrative and footnotes, Weber lays out a most fascinating story, starting with a review of Spanish and Native American cultures prior to their encounter. He explains that the Spaniards “brought to the New World overheated imaginations, fired by the popular literature of their day”, which “extolled knight-errantry in exotic lands, where brave men found wealth and glory” and “exalted “courage, stoicism, and heroism, and glorified the warrior as the ideal of Spanish manhood” (p. 24). Besides reconstructing with much detail the history of Spanish occupation in North America, Weber reviews the legacy left by the Spaniards as well as the approach society and historians have taken to this chapter of American history.

In The Spanish Borderlands Frontier: 1513-1821, Jesuit priest John Francis Bannon, who studied at Berkeley with Herbert Eugene Bolton, one of the most prominent authorities on Spanish American history, provides a provocative account of the Spanish borderlands. Bannon asserts that “the Spanish frontier in North America has been known as the Borderlands since the appearance, in 1921, of the little volume of Herbert Eugene Bolton in the Chronicles of America series, which bore that title – Spanish Borderlands: A Chronicle of Old Florida and the Southwest” (p. 2). In this book, Bannon shows that the northern rim of New Spain constituted an arduous challenge to the Spanish Crown, which advanced slowly northward from Mexico City, to establish outposts from Texas to the Bay of San Francisco. Bannon, like Weber, argues that, different from the Anglo-American frontier, the Spanish frontier was mainly a defensive frontier, an example of man’s strength for pioneering enterprise in unknown territory. The Spanish frontiersmen were a “curious breed of men, in many instances the product of a racial intermingling with the Native American” (p. 231), who proved to be a remarkable people. For Bannon, the story of these men and women who came to establish their home in this foreign land is a remarkable example of human pioneering. Bannon’s book, following the Boltonian tradition, is well organized and highlighted with interesting details, such as the story of the “Lady in Blue”, a Spanish nun, by the name of María de Jesús Agreda, who claimed to have spiritual journeys, as miraculous bilocations, to North America to prepare the Native population for Christianity. Besides intriguing stories, such as the one of Sister María, the author describes the travels of the conquistadores and the development of Florida, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, presenting an all-inclusive treatment of the Spanish Borderlands.

In Spain in the Southwest: A Narrative History of Colonial New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California, John L. Kessel tells the story of the large waves of Spanish exploration north of Mexico based on secondary and published primary sources. Kessel’s narrative encompasses over 350 years of Spanish exploration in North America, from Columbus arrival in 1492 to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which stripped Mexico of half its territory in 1848. Kessel recounts with formidable details interesting episodes of Spanish enterprise in North America, such as Cabeza de Vaca’s odyssey in the North American continent to the work of the Franciscans who labored as missionaries among the Natives, especially among the Pueblos of New Mexico. Kessel’s sweeping overview of Spanish North America comes with several illustrations depicting life in the frontiers as well important figures, such as, Don Diego de Vargas, who played an important role in the reconquest of the Pueblos after the revolts of 1680 and 1690. By showing how the Spanish Crown approached this far corner if its kingdom, Kessel helps explain the challenges that emerged from this grandiose enterprise.

In Los Paisanos: Spanish Settlers on the Northern Frontier of New Spain, Oakah L. Jones, Jr. provides a provocative account of Spanish settlements in the Northern frontier of New Spain. For Jones, these settlements were more than just military and missionary ventures. They were a vital part of Spanish expansion. Jones argues that the role of settlement of frontier communities “has been neglected, while historians have emphasized that of the explorers, missionaries, government officials, and presidial soldiers” (p. 237). In this book, Jones contends that “settlers and their communities were integral parts of the Spanish frontier experience” (p. 237). Jones approaches the history of the Spanish frontier in North America from a different angle, showing that the frontier’s citizens were not only “more numerous than member of military and religious establishments, but they contributed in many ways to the expansion and consolidation of Spain’s holdings in America” (p. 237). This book is a fascinating account of civil life in the northern rim of New Spain. Jones calls these settlers the paisanos (countrymen) because he thinks this term most accurately describes these settlers, who worked the land and made North America their home. This is a vivid account of the founding and organization of civil settlements in the frontier.

Authors Weber, Bannon, Kessel, and Jones present a clear and detailed account of Spanish settlement in North America. They agree that Spain changed the landscape and the lives of North Americans, leaving a permanent legacy in what would later become the United States. Weber summarizes the importance of Spanish presence in the United States when he points out to what Spanish scholar Miguel Romera-Navarro said: “the North Americans should not be able to forget that two-thirds of their country has been Spanish territory” (p. 354). Almost two hundred years after the Spanish occupation of North America, Spanish culture and heritage still survive and permeate people’s lives across the country.