Settlements from Spanish America

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Figure 1:

Spanish Texas. c. 1780-1791

Within the Provincias Internas system, which had been set up in 1776 to simplify administration of Spain's northern frontier, Spanish Texas remained sparsely populated and administratively challenged in 1789. Though many East Texas missions had been closed in the 1770s following the Marqués de Rubí's inspection tour, Spanish authority was sustained through a network of presidios (military forts) and missions. Having crossed more than 7,000 miles across New Spain, Rubí had come to the conclusion that Spain lacked the riches and might to defend all of its missions and advised that Spain drop all of its Texas missions except those at San Antonio and Goliad (La Bahía). This resulted in the three surviving missions in East Texas closing in 1773, with colonists directed to relocate to San Antonio—a direction they grudgingly followed as San Antonio was "hotter and drier than East Texas and required irrigation for farming".

Originally starting in the early 1700s when Spain set six missions to guard against French incursion, ranching dominated the Texas economy in 1789. Originally managing the 4,800 head of Spanish cattle brought by colonists, priests, and soldiers in 1721, Franciscan priests were the first Texas ranchers. From mounted herding and roping methods to particular tools and saddle styles, Spanish ranching customs were firmly ingrained in Texas by 1789 and derived from Spanish roots. The Spanish influence permeated legal and cultural spheres as well; words like "rodeo," "lariat," and "corral" have Spanish roots. The cattle in the San Antonio River Valley stayed and multiplied even as many missions were abandoned after 1763; residents rounded up herds and transported them to markets in New Orleans.

Spanish Texas in 1789's ongoing threats from indigenous people complicated colonizing initiatives. In 1778, Governor Domingo Cabello had observed that "there is not an instant by day or night when reports do not arrive from all these ranches of barbaries and disorders... totally unprotected as we are... will result in the absolute destruction and loss of this province". Following the closing of East Texas missions, Gil Ybarbo had led colonists back to East Texas in early 1779, founding Nacogdoches close to the closed Mission Guadalupe without official permission. Deep in the Piney Woods, Nacogdoches evolved a more autonomous way of life since some of their early colonists had lived in French Louisiana and Spain had limited influence over these remote colonists. Spain would completely stop supporting the Texas missions by the 1790s, insisting the churches help themselves since the government felt the missions had already successfully turned mission-based Native Americans into "good citizens".

Figure 2:

Spanish West Florida. c. 1789-1794

Esteban Rodríguez Miró was governor of both Louisiana and Florida territories from 1785 to 1791, hence he oversaw Spanish West Florida in 1789. Miró was still recovering from the terrible New Orleans fire of 1788, which had virtually destroyed almost all of the city; his quick response—arranging tents for residents, bringing food from warehouses, sending ships to Philadelphia for aid, and lifting Spanish trade restrictions—had made him one of the most popular Spanish governors. Under his direction, the Saint Louis Cathedral among other more fire-resistant brick, plaster, heavy masonry, ceramic tile buildings of New Orleans (today's French Quarter) was rebuilt. Courtyards were included. Though the Tignon law Miró passed in 1786 mandated women of color to wear head coverings, the law resulted in a custom of wearing elaborate tignons.

With British merchant company Panton, Leslie, and Company running profitable trading offices in Pensacola and Apalachicola, fur trade dominated Spanish West Florida's economy in 1789. Selling "every conceivable product, excepting rifles which were prohibited by Spanish law," this company built a prosperous fur trading empire with the Native Americans of the area. Relationships with aboriginal leaders such as Alexander McGillivray, the half-Creek chief who had promised friendship with Spain in 1784, benefited the fur trade. Through ties to New Orleans and Havana, a hub for Spanish colonial trade all around the Americas, West Florida was included into the larger Atlantic economy. Often from Havana, ships arriving in New Orleans established a network linking West Floridians to the Atlantic economy and helped ideas and news to be shared throughout Spain's New World possessions.

Miró had great difficulties negotiating boundary conflicts with the United States over the northern border of West Florida. Originally 31° north latitude under Spanish rule, the line had been shifted to 32°28' north latitude in 1767 under British control. Spain claimed the enlarged British boundaries while the United States kept to the old boundary after Britain acknowledged the Spanish conquest of West Florida but omitted to define the northern border. By 1790 Miró would strengthen Nogales (modern-day Vicksburg) and the mouth of the Mississippi against potential conflict with the United States. In order to stop American expansion, Spanish officials had started a plan to reject American claims south of the Ohio River and west of the Appalachian Mountains by forging ties with southern tribes in the spring of 1784. This led the Four Nations—the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Creek—to sign treaties of friendship and fealty with Spanish officials.

Figure 3:

Spanish California. c. 1789

From 1782 to 1791 Pedro Fages was Governor of the Californias; his career advanced significantly when he was promoted to colonel in 1789. Alta California was split under his direction into four presidio districts—San Francisco, Monterey, Santa Barbara, and San Diego—with Monterey, which had replaced Loreto as the capital in 1777, highly centralized. Though hot-tempered and "inclined to quarrel with anyone from his wife to the padre presidente," Fages was regarded as an industrious and energetic administrator. Concerned about the lack of trained labor, he suggested in 1787 that artisans imprisoned in Mexico City and Guadalajara have their sentences commuted to exile in California, although the officials of New Spain never followed this advise.

The California mission system had evolved into an astonishingly profitable commercial venture by 1789. Most missions, after only a few years of existence, had become almost self-sufficient, providing their residents with consistent supplies of food, clothing, and housing. Some missions were generating extra goods for trade and had populations more than 1,000 people, including some priests and troops. With their constantly developing skills allowing trade with military outposts and passing ships, the missions drew local Native Californians who supplied the labor required to build robust economies. Originally dependent on supplies from San Blas, missions soon looked for other commercial enterprises when it became evident that support from Spain would be insufficient.

With the mission system essentially upsetting conventional indigenous ways of life, Spanish California's social system was strictly hierarchical. Fages wrote on the Carmel mission in 1787, characterizing the Indians of the area as "the laziest, most brutish and least rational of all the natives discovered between San Diego and San Francisco". Along with the "foggy and windy climate, shortage of potable water, high death rate, and language barriers," he ascribed the slow progress of the mission to these traits. Two missions—Mission Santa Barbara (December 4, 1786) and La Purisima Mission (December 8, 1787)—were established under Fages' second tenure despite these difficulties. With rising disease rates and poor living conditions, the mission system kept growing even if the native population was suffering.

Figure 4:

Spanish New Mexico. c. 1789

The successful diplomatic efforts of Governor Juan Bautista de Anza with indigenous people were producing results for Spanish New Mexico in 1789. Arriving in Santa Fe, Anza had been assigned specifically by Commandant General Teodoro de Croix to form an alliance with the Comanches—a chore José de Gálvez had judged almost impossible during his tour of the northern frontier. Against these expectations, Anza had negotiated peace with one of the most well-known Comanche headmen, Ecueracapa, producing a treaty that both sides felt would be advantageous. While gaining access to more trade goods, including guns, leather goods, knives, and other manufactured products that reached New Mexico via Chihuahua merchants, the Comanches properly felt they had not ceded any power by joining allies of the Spanish.

Following a two-year conflict, Apache leader Ojos Colorados sought peace at the Janos presidio in late 1789, so triggering a major political change. This came after his earlier flight from the peace establishment at San Buenaventura in March 1787, when he and seven other Mimbreño chiefs led between 800–900 people away, killing three Chiricaguis and several Spaniards in the process. Feeding the population of military colonies in northwest Chihuahua, the Spanish had started a two-year campaign against him, rewarding Spanish men with land and status upon proving their bravery against Apaches. The sudden return to peace negotiations exposed the complicated and erratic nature of Spanish-Apache relations, which alternated between conflict and compromise depending on new events and pragmatic concerns.

With supply lines thin as fresh supplies from New Spain arrived only every three years, New Mexico's economy in 1789 revolved on trade between settlers, indigenous peoples, and Spanish officials. While indigenous people traded hides, turkeys, jerky, tallow, pelts, and prisoners for beads, iron tools, and other goods, the Spanish traded sheep and cattle. Under the encomienda system, which limited the food Pueblos could access but gave villages needed supplies, agriculture functioned. Through reduced or eliminated labor costs, labor supplied through repartimiento helped the Spanish economy. Although salt taken from mines was traded, mining remained rather irrelevant to the economic development of New Mexico. Maintaining the political and economic systems that sustained Spanish control of this far-off northern territory, Hispanic citizens supported the local government and crown by various tributes and taxes.

In summary

In Spain's North American colonies, the year 1789 marked a pivotal time when every area faced different difficulties yet helped to support Spain's larger imperial agenda. Under Governor Pedro Fages, Spanish California was creating financially successful missions despite issues with indigenous populations and shortages of trained labor. Under Governor Esteban Rodríguez Miró, Spanish West Florida was healing from the terrible New Orleans fire while juggling complicated ties with Native American tribes and raising hostilities with the United States over territorial limits.

Though its ranching economy was creating unique customs that would later impact American cattle businesses, Spanish Texas remained thinly populated and open to indigenous attack. While keeping a mostly self-sufficient economy despite limited ties to other Spanish territories, Spanish New Mexico had attained relative stability by diplomatic arrangements with Comanche and Apache groups.

With different degrees of effective control, economic development, and indigenous relations, these four territories stood for different strategies for Spain's colonial enterprise. Their experiences in 1789 foreshadowed both the strengths and weaknesses of Spain's North American empire as it entered its last decades before the early nineteenth century's independence movements would fundamentally change the political scene of the Americas.