Mixtón War
Mixtón War | |||||||
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Part of the Mexican Indian Wars | |||||||
Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza and Tlaxcalans battle with the Caxcanes | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
New Spain
| Caxcanes | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Pedro de Alvarado † Antonio de Mendoza | Francisco Tenamaztle |
The Mixtón War (1540-1542) was a rebellion by the Caxcan people of northwestern Mexico against the Spanish conquerors. The war was named after Mixtón, a hill in Zacatecas which served as an Indigenous stronghold.
The Caxcanes
Although other indigenous groups also fought against the Spanish in the Mixtón War, the
Background
The first contact of the Caxcanes and other indigenous peoples of the northwestern Mexico with the Spanish, was in 1529 when
The War
In spring 1540, the Caxcanes and their allies struck back, emboldened perhaps by the fact that Governor
The command structure of the Caxcanes is unknown but the most prominent leader who emerged among them was Tenamaztle of Nochistlán, Zacatecas.
Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza called upon the experienced conquistador Pedro de Alvarado to assist in putting down the revolt. Alvarado declined to await reinforcements and attacked Mixtón in June 1541 with 400 Spaniards and an unknown number of indigenous allies.[9] He was met there by an estimated 15,000 natives under Tenamaztle and Don Diego, a Zacateco. The first attack of the Spanish was repulsed with 10 Spaniards and many indigenous allies killed. Subsequent attacks by Alvarado were also unsuccessful and on June 24 Alvarado was injured when a horse fell on him. He died on July 4.[10]
Emboldened, the natives attacked the city of Guadalajara in September but were repulsed.[11] The indigenous army retired to Nochistlán and other strongpoints. The Spanish authorities were now thoroughly alarmed and feared that the revolt would spread. They assembled a force of 450 Spaniards and 30,000-60,000 Aztec, Tlaxcalan, and other natives, and under Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza invaded the land of the Caxcanes.[12] With his overwhelming force, Mendoza reduced the indigenous strongholds one-by-one in a war of no quarter. On November 9, 1541, he captured the city of Nochistlán and Tenamaztle, but the indigenous leader later escaped.[13] Tenamaztle would remain at large as a guerilla until 1550. In early 1542 the stronghold of Mixtón fell to the Spaniards and the rebellion was over. In the aftermath of the natives' defeat, "thousands were dragged off in chains to the mines, and many of the survivors (mostly women and children) were transported from their homelands to work on Spanish farms and haciendas.".[14] By the viceroy's order, many of those captured after the fall of Mixtón were executed, some by cannon fire, some torn apart by dogs, and others stabbed. The reports of the excessive violence caused the Council of the Indies to undertake a secret investigation into the conduct of the viceroy.[15]
Aftermath
As one authority said, the success of Cortés in defeating the Aztecs in only two years "created an illusion of European superiority over the Indian as a warrior." However, the Spanish victories over the Aztecs and other complex societies "proved to be but a prelude to a far longer military struggle against the peculiar and terrifying prowess of Indian America’s more primitive warriors."[16]
Victory in the Mixtón War enabled the Spanish to control the region in which
After their defeat the Caxcanes were absorbed into Spanish society and lost their identity as a distinct people. They would later serve as auxiliaries to Spanish soldiers in their continued advance northward.[18] Spanish expansion after the Mixtón War would lead to the longer and even more bloody
The Caxcanes possibly survive into the 21st century, at least in folk festivals, as the Tastuane people. Annual fiestas of the Tastuanes in towns such as Moyahua de Estrada, and Apozol, Zacatecas, commemorate the Mixtón War.[citation needed]
See also
References
- ^ Schmal, John P. "Sixteenth Century Indigenous Jalisco[permanent dead link]." Accessed Dec 23, 2010
- ^ Bakewell, P. J. Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico: Zacatecas, 1546-1700. Cambridge: Cambridge U Press, 1971, p. 5
- ^ Krippner-Martinez, James. Rereading the Conquest: Power, Politics, and the History of Early Colonial Michoacan, Mexico, 1521-1565. State College: Penn State U Press, 2001, p 56
- ^ Quoting Peter Gerhart in "Sixteenth Century Indigenous Jalisco[permanent dead link]" by John Schmal. Accessed Dec 23, 2010
- ^ Schmal, John P. "The History of Zacatecas", Accessed Dec 24, 2010
- ^ Padilla, D. Matias de la Mota. Historia de la Conquista de la Provincia de la Nueva-Galicia. Mexico Imprenta del Gobierno, 1870, p. 115. The phrase in the reference is "le mataron, Y asado se le comieron."
- ^ Simmons, Marc, The Last Conquistador: Juan de Oñate and the Settling of the Far Southwest. Norman: U of OK Press, p. 23
- ^ Leon-Portilla, Miguel. Francisco Tenamaztle Mexico City: Editorial Diana, 2005, pp. 25-59
- ^ Schmal, John P. "The Indigenous People of Zacatecas", Accessed Jan 1, 2024
- ^ Leon-Portilla, pp. 72-74
- ^ Leon-Portilla, pp. 77-80
- ^ http://lantinola.com/story.php/=1109[permanent dead link]
- ^ Enciclopedia de Municipios. Nochistlan de Mejia[permanent dead link],. Accessed Dec 24, 2010
- ^ Peter Gerhard quoted in Schmal, John P. "Sixteenth Century Indigenous Jalisco", Accessed Dec. 24, 1010
- ^ Juan Comas, Historical Reality and the Detractors of Father las Casas, Juan Friede and Benjamin Keen (eds.). Bartolomé de las Casas in History: Toward an Understanding of the Man and his Work. Collection spéciale: CER. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. p. 493
- ^ Philip Wayne Powell, quoted in "The Indigenous People of Zacatecas" by John P. Schmal, accessed Dec 23, 2010
- ^ ^ Ewing, Russell C.; Edward Holland Spicer (1966). Russell C. Ewing. ed. Six faces of Mexico: history, people, geography, government, economy, literature & art (2 ed.). Tucson: U of AZ Press, 1966. p. 126. Retrieved August 2009. "The Spaniards did not break through into the Chichimeca country until 1541 when several groups of Chichimeca Indians were defeated in the Mixtón War"
- ^ Schmal, John P. "The Indigenous People of Zacatecas" , Accessed Dec 23, 2010
Further reading
English
- Altman, Ida (2010). The war for Mexico's west : Indians and Spaniards in New Galicia, 1524-1550. University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 978-0-8263-4493-9.
- OCLC 423777.
- Rabasa, José (2000). Writing Violence on the Northern Frontier: The Historiography of Sixteenth-Century New Mexico and Florida and the Legacy of Conquest. Durham, NC: OCLC 43662151.
- Schmal, John P. (2004). "The History of Zazatecas". History of Mexico. Houston Institute for Culture. Retrieved 2007-12-14.
- Weigand, Phil C. (2006). "Mixton War". The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195188431.
Spanish
- Giudicelli, Christophe; Pierre Ragon (2000). "Les martyrs ou la Vierge? Frères martyrs et images outragées dans le Mexique du Nord (XVIème-XVIIème siècles)" (reproduced online at Nuevo Mundo—Mundos Nuevos, 2005). Cahiers des Amériques latines. Second Series (in French). 33 (1). Paris: Institut des Hautes Études de l’Amérique latine (IHEAL), OCLC 12685246.
- Secretaría de Gobernación, Gobierno del Estado de Zacatecas. Archived from the originalon 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2007-12-14.
- López-Portillo y Weber, José (1939). La rebelión de Nueva Galicia. OCLC 77249201.
- Monroy Castillo, María Isabel; Tomás Calvillo Unna (1997). Breve historia de San Luis Potosí. Serie breves historias de los estados de la República Mexicana (in Spanish) (Reproduced online at the Biblioteca Digital, OCLC 39401967. Retrieved 2007-12-14.
- Rojas, Beatriz; Jesús Gómez Serrano; Andrés Reyes Rodríguez; Salvador Camacho; Carlos Reyes Sahagún (1994). Breve historia de Aguascalientes. Serie breves historias de los estados de la República Mexicana (in Spanish) (Reproduced online at the Biblioteca Digital, OCLC 37602467. Retrieved 2007-12-14.